How Connected Safety Can Unlock Warehouse Safety

Using connected safety can ensure compliance with OSHA’s latest NEP, protect workers, boost efficiency, and prevent safety issues before they become safety incidents.

• By Lorenza Ordonez
• May 01, 2024

What happens when you combine labor shortages, supply chain disruptions and an increasing number of construction projects? For safety managers around the globe, that adds up to a growing number of workplace safety incidents.

While the top 10 OSHA citation rankings remained relatively unchanged from the year prior, overall citation numbers across the board increased in 2023. As businesses across numerous industries continue to struggle to remain compliant, OSHA stepped in with a recent National Emphasis Program (NEP) focusing specifically on warehouses and distribution centers. This NEP, announced in July 2023, aims to reduce current injury rates in this space, which in some sectors occur at more than twice the rate of that in private industry. 

Safety hazards in warehouses and across distribution centers are abundant and wide-ranging. Some commonly seen risks center around forklift accidents and injuries; the often-invisible ergonomic injuries; as well as slips, trips, and falls. But there are others such as falling objects, hand lacerations, PPE compliance, and heat stress that can impact workers as well. These hazards are not unique to these environments, but the breadth and depth of hazards within a warehouse is what makes the environment particularly challenging. 

The worst part? Businesses often lack visibility into what’s happening, or struggle to correct the pattern without the proper insights.

Fortunately, there’s good news. Technology, specifically connected safety solutions, can play a significant role in not only identifying and mitigating risks before they become OSHA citations — but in helping businesses manage their overall safety program like never before.

The Power of Connected Safety

Connected safety solutions, as the name implies, utilize networked devices such as cameras and wearables enabled by sensors — among others — to collect data on potential safety hazards, analyze the information and trigger or communicate a response to users or safety managers. They can often act as an extension of the safety manager, pulling valuable insights into a single dashboard. Enabling these safety managers, who are often spread thin and wear many hats within their organizations, to have all facets of their safety program illustrated and available with only a few clicks transforms your business to better protect your employees and your bottom line.

From the simplest of reminders around equipment repair and inspection, to real-time environmental monitoring in high hazard spaces, these technologies are poised to rapidly change the landscape of workplace health and safety. 

To see how it all comes together in the warehouse, imagine a company wants to reduce injuries, near misses, and citations due to Powered Industrial Trucks (forklifts). A connected safety solution could capture forklift activities via a camera sensor and highlight zones with the greatest risks or hazards. This would let the organization make structural or procedural changes that could help reduce these incidents or near misses. Additionally, they could incorporate a wearable with a forklift sensor that not only prevents an individual from operating a forklift if they are not trained or credentialed, but also helps avoid collisions with a zoning sensor that disables the vehicle if it senses a potential collision.  

Given the broad scope of potential hazards, many organizations need to have an extensive array of solutions that integrate with each other to address their specific concerns. The ability to customize a connected safety solution is certainly a huge advantage, but understanding which solution will best meet your needs can be a daunting task. 

Here are four considerations to help narrow down which connected safety elements are right for your specific warehouse or network of distribution centers:

1) Understand the problem you are trying to solve: Identifying your specific challenges and their cause is key. But defining an expected outcome is just as important and will play a large role in determining the most effective solution. For example, if your organization is seeking to understand the unknown risks that exist in their warehouse, the very discovery of these risks would be the expected outcome. Be clear on the issue(s) you are trying to identify and what the goals are to address them. When identifying your challenges and ideal outcomes, consider the following questions:

• What injury or hazard is consistently impacting the work environment? 

• Are slips and falls your biggest area of concern? Is this specific to a particular zone or area in your facility that may require greater attention? 

• Do you understand the ergonomic hazards that are present? Are costly musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) occurring in your workplace? 

• Are there risks and hazards that you may not have identified yet? 

• What do near misses say about trends in your facility or jobsite, and how can you course correct? 

2) Concentrate on connectivity: Connected safety solutions don’t have any power unless they are truly “connected” to each other. Understanding the right type of connectivity that a device needs, and ensuring its availability at the facility, is paramount. And yet, not all connectivity options are the same. For instance, some devices only function in an enclosed and wireless setting, while others can function with both wireless and cellular connectivity. 

Others may use an “offline-mode” or partial offline mode where the device(s) will capture data while in an environment with no connectivity or low signal, and then send those data points into the cloud upon returning to an environment with connectivity. Keeping these requirements in mind from the outset helps ensure success.

3) Understand the scope: Just as your organization is unique, so too are the technology applications involved in a connected safety environment. Some solutions may apply to a smaller work setting or a scenario where fewer individuals perform the work. Other solutions are ideal in larger warehouse environments as a greater number of people are engaged in daily functions, possibly across varied environments within that facility, or varied tasks that require different PPE. Nailing down not only the scope of the activity, but the nuances in safety needs of each worker and zone, will help you take a more tailored approach to your connected safety solution. This also ensures your custom technology mix integrates seamlessly to protect worker lives while saving your business real dollars and cents.

The Often-Ignored Risk: Ergonomic Injuries

Ergonomic safety hazards are often overlooked, but as the OSHA NEP indicates, this is an area that can no longer be ignored. Ergonomic injuries, which can affect joints, tendons, nerves, and muscles, often build up over an extended period of time, and may not even be noticeable at first. However, they can lead to significant MSDs that are not only debilitating but long lasting.  

In a warehouse setting, ergonomic injuries can be caused by a number of factors, such as:

• Awkward, prolonged postures from twisting, bending, or reaching. 

• Repetitive movements that fatigue muscles and tendons.

• Hand-arm vibration from using tools and other equipment over an extended period of time.

While these injuries are often invisible at first, they make themselves known on the balance sheet. According to recent findings from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, nearly 33 percent of “days-away-from-work” cases are due to ergonomics-related injuries. Those injuries have significant financial ramifications; worker compensation claims tied to MSDs cost U.S. employers more than $20 billion every year.  

Connected safety solutions can help mitigate ergonomic hazards in the warehouse or the distribution center, identify those risky or repetitive movements, and track your workplace trends to provide better visibility into where MSDs are happening, and why. As mentioned earlier, there are a wide variety of connected safety solutions, but when it comes to addressing ergonomic hazards, the two most common solutions are video analytics and wearables. 

Video Analytics

Video cameras are the ultimate sensor, and when combined with computer vision software and AI, there are many use cases that can be addressed. From near misses and falls to ergonomic concerns and PPE detection, video analytics can monitor, alert and document areas of concern. 

Analysis of these alerts and viewing the recordings will help inform policies, adjustments to the physical environment and identify training opportunities. Often, your existing camera infrastructure can support the use case.

Wearables

Wearables come in all shapes and sizes, and some can do much more than just address ergonomic risks. Gloves and sleeves with integrated sensors can detect improper engagement with a given task or repetitive motion. 

For example, specialized arm bands can capture poor ergonomic activity when lifting and lowering. In a warehouse setting, wearables can be added to a harness, which can then provide corrective guidance around how an individual lifts or lowers objects in real-time through a series of alerts or beeps. 

This instant feedback can lower the strain on an individual by 40 percent when lifting an object. Unlike video analytics where the information is sent to the safety manager or a third party, data captured from the wearable device can be immediately sent to the employee — often via haptic or audible feedback. 

It’s worth noting that while video analytics and wearables can go a long way towards reducing ergonomic risks, following up with employee training and ongoing communication is critical to maximize the impact of any connected safety technologies. 

As the growing demand for products puts more strain and pressure on workers, warehouse safety managers are contending with the tough task of minimizing injuries in an increasingly challenging environment. The prevalence of ergonomic hazards and injuries, which may be hard to spot, only adds to this challenge.

Connected safety devices like wearables and video analytics can go a long way towards addressing the hazards laid out in the recent NEP. However, such solutions are just part of the puzzle. To successfully address warehouse compliance, organizations need to garner a holistic understanding of their safety environment, identify potential hazards or opportunities for improvement, and deploy solutions that meet their specific needs to protect workers and the bottom line.

This article originally appeared in the April/May 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.