Top Tips for Warehouse Rack Safety
When it comes to organizing your warehouse, pallet rack safety is a key part of it. You have to rely on your storage systems and equipment every day, constantly stacking and moving products whenever necessary. In order to maintain efficiencies throughout your operation, we’ve put together some critical warehouse rack safety tips to help keep everything running smoothly.
Warehouse layout is critical
An important part of warehouse safety is to ensure the aisles are wide enough for navigating your forklifts and other machinery. It can be tempting to make your warehouse aisle as narrow as possible in order to fit more products in the facility, but if they are too narrow, you won’t be able to move pallets efficiently.
Don’t overload your warehouse racks
Pallet racks are strong, but they all have a weight limit. Key to warehouse safety is understanding the limits of your different racks and rack setups and not exceeding them. When pallet racks are overloaded, it can cause serious problems to the system’s structure and stability. OSHA and ANSI suggest that warehouses label the weight limits on each type of storage rack and operators are made aware of these limits and where to find it.
Complete inspections daily
One of the most important components of maintaining warehouse rack safety is checking your storage system for issues every day. Keep an eye out for missing safety pins, beam deflection, and slight dents in the racking. Noticing small issues before they become major problems helps prevent unnecessary downtime and keeps your costs low. We recommend checking:
- Front and rear posts/uprights
- Footplates
- Floor fixing anchors
- Shims
- Bracing
- Beams
- Beam locks
- Column guards
- Decking
- Anti-collapse mesh or netting
- Load notices/pallet racking system labels
Anchor your pallet racks
An important part of safety best practices for warehouses is to secure your pallet racks to the floor for added stability. Anchoring the racks will help prevent collapse or failure caused by an equipment impact or other accident. To increase pallet rack safety, we also recommend using backstop beams, pallet stops, or netting to reduce the chances of products falling, resulting in injuries or damage.
Stack to the right height
Just as important as warehouse rack safety is rack effectiveness. It’s important to make your racks tall enough to match the max loading height of your forklift, so you can store as much product as possible and not be out of range of your machine or overload your pallet racks.
Train your employees
Properly training forklift operators is a crucial part of warehouse rack safety. They should be instructed to drive carefully, load weight slowly and properly, and understand the storage capabilities and limits of each pallet rack. Any accident, no matter how small, should be reported to management for inspection and repairs.
If you have any questions about pallet rack safety or warehouse safety in general, please don’t hesitate to contact our team!