How safe are your pallet racking safety devices? Not safe enough, it seems. No matter how well designed, installed, regularly maintained and correctly aligned with the most appropriate MHE, accidents will always happen and one of the five key causes of warehouse accidents involves moving or falling objects.
Protecting the storage medium has long been the poor relation in terms of warehouse safety priorities but such is the risk to business survival from the worse kind of racking collapse, namely domino- style, it almost beggars belief that this aspect of racking safety attracts such relative insouciance. Next to the risk of racking collapse itself is falling objects on personnel.
For many years the only defence against pallet collapses from collisions with MHE has been the upright post protectors and various truck guidance measures but these were restricted to heights of no more than about 4 ft. Then, three years ago, RCP Ltd* patented its Rhino system that connects the upright racking posts to a ceiling structure via steel ropes. This addressed the problem of domino-style racking collapses that could be so serious as to jeopardise the future of companies, especially those geared to e-fulfilment functions when failure to make timely deliveries could see permanent loss of future business. In some domino-style collapses it is worrying how little contact there is between a forklift and a horizontal beam which causes virtually all of the racking to collapse. But what of the more confined peril from falling objects from the racking?
There have been two main measures to protect from this peril, namely racking safety netting and steel mesh containment panels. Of the two, netting creates a safer working environment and risk reduction solution when used as part of a suitably safe system of work, says Chris Hopkirk, sales director of Warehouse Partners, a trading division of Westbrook Industrial.** Available in various sizes and strengths, RackNets are strong and lightweight and easy to install (up to 2 to 3 times quicker than steel mesh). They are made to measure so there is no cutting down or edge working on site. Unlike steel mesh, RackNets will not dent or corrode and life ownership cost is much reduced. Retrieval of goods/pallets is made easier and they are designed to contain and restrain 1 tonne loads within the net envelope. Easy net removal enables beams to be adjusted and rack repairs to be carried out quickly.
The nets are normally used where there is pedestrian access to the rear of a single run of racking and is particularly important where employees are picking off the rear of the rack. The risk of pallets being inadvertently pushed through the rack are greatly increased where a support system such as timber or mesh decks are used. In-flue netting, therefore, provides increased protection from product or pallets being pushed through from one rack to another.
So why is so little netting sold in relation to steel mesh panels? Chris Hopkirk suggests the racking industry could be educating the industry more about the inherent risks of falling objects from pallet racking and that as a minimum a risk assessment and safe system of work should be carried out to ascertain their requirements. The fact is that steel mesh is designed to retain only boxes of up 50 kg and no more.
**www.warehouse-partners.co.uk
*www.rcpsystem.com
RackNet in place