Forklift Safety Approaches & Systems

Get a brief introduction to the hazards of forklift operations in the industrial warehouse environment, including the various hazard types, accident frequency, and possible ways to improve forklift safety in this online course created by Dr. Samuel Doughty, PhD, P.E.

Overview of Forklift Safety

Forklifts are an essential tool in almost all warehouse and industrial production facilities. They typically are used to transport parts from a storage or warehouse facility to the production area in large quantities in order to keep the production lines well supplied. They're also used to move finished products from the production area either directly to the shipping dock or into a product storage area to await later shipment. There hardly any physical product industries where forklifts are not used in some aspect of the material handling. Forklifts are driven by a wide variety of personnel, ranging from the highly-trained driver who does this every day to the new hire that just started yesterday. They operate in a wide variety of environments as well, including both brightly lit production areas and dimly lit (or even completely dark) warehouses. And because forklifts often move back and forth so rapidly, operators tend to have little time for their vision to adjust to the changed lighting conditions. All of this simply points to the likelihood of accidents involving this versatile and powerful material handling equipment. The balance of this PDH course is drawn from a white paper written by Roger Bostelman of NIST in which he reports the result of a meeting on forklift safety.

Course Outline

• Introductory Comments
• Bostelman White Paper
• Forklift Safety Statistics and Issues
• Safety Approaches & Systems
• Industry Comments

Learning Objectives

At the successful conclusion of this course, you’ll be able to identify and discuss:

• The scope of the forklift safely problem
• Hazards that surround forklift operations
• The inadequacy of existing forklift safety measures
• How to overcome the challenges presented when pedestrians and forklift operations share a space
• Best practices to improve forklift safety in a variety of different situations
• Safety approaches currently being implemented by major companies