MHD WAREHOUSING
SUCCESS THROUGH SAFETY
Jeffrey Triantafilo, Director of Systems & DC Design at Fuzzy LogX.
Warehouse designs and operations continue to change, but worker safety is as important as ever. MHD talks to Fuzzy LogX Principal Consultant Bas Schilders about current and future safety priorities for vendors, designers and warehouse managers.
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ix years ago, Principal Consultant Bas Schilders launched a new consultancy after years of working for some of the world’s largest automation vendors. He has since been able to build a team of “warehouse wizards” with an intimate knowledge of the solutions on the market. Fuzzy LogX puts extra effort into staying informed about the latest developments and works with complete independence from any vendor or property company. This freedom allows the team to focus in on the specificities of a project, make the most of relationships across the entire automation spectrum and as a result, provide solutions solely benefitting the customer’s needs and wants. Within that spectrum, safety is the cornerstone of everything Fuzzy LogX does. Fuzzy LogX consultants initially perform a walk-through of a warehouse site to gauge a business’s processes at a higher level, even 42 | MHD FEBRUARY 2022
before they sign as a customer. “Regardless of whether a business is already a customer of us or not, we will walk into any warehouse and look at it from a completely independent viewpoint and highlight anything we see that’s unsafe,” Bas says. “The most important thing is for all warehouses to be safe.” “We never want to hear in the news about a safety incident in a warehouse we visited that could have been prevented by highlighting unsafe situations.”
AUSTRALIAN STANDARDS Australia has a very high safety rating and there are many standards for almost every solution found in Australian warehouses. These standards apply across design, implementation, auditing, operating, and maintenance of a facility and form the basis for the Fuzzy LogX team to help keep facilities safe across the country. Bas notes that it’s often small details which are overlooked in operations.
“It can be anything – as simple as not maintaining sufficient space between a person and a forklift in an aisle, operators being exposed to a rack baseplate that’s missing a bolt or a beam missing a safety pin,” he says. “We are trained on what to look out for from a safety point of view in line with the Australian Standards.” After a mad rush to the end of the peak holiday season last year, Bas counsels warehouse managers to avoid any complacency entering a new year. As e-commerce continues to drive businesses, he adds the onus should be on taking regular safety checks. “A lot if it isn’t rocket science, Warehouse Managers can start by organising a weekly or fortnightly walk-through of their sites,” he says. “In the morning when people start working, have a simple safety checklist to check for any rack damages, or if any workers look like they are over-exerting themselves. If you’ve got obstructions in aisles leaving too little space for people,
