Danger lurks in every nook and cranny, especially in the
warehouse. People are often regarded as the greatest source of risk: the idea is that without
people, there would be no accidents, or so the thinking goes. The question is whether that is entirely correct.
Safety experts Frans Hardus and Willem Stehouwer are calling for a different perspective during the Day of
Warehouse Day, they advocate a different perspective: teach people to think, make them aware
of the risks and give them the responsibility to report dangerous situations immediately
report them immediately.
Frans Hardus begins his workshop during Warehouse Day
Warehouse Day with a thought-provoking question. “What do you look at when you walk through the
warehouse to check the condition of the racking? That’s right, at the
front. That’s what almost everyone does. Hardly anyone looks at the
back,” says the safety specialist, who is called upon both at home and abroad
to inspect warehouse racking.
During his inspections, Hardus always takes a
camera with him. In the ‘Hidden Faults’ workshop, he shows a large number of
recent photographs that all have one thing in common: from the front, they sometimes appear to be
wrong, but seeing the reverse side sends a shiver down your spine. Think of
uprights that are rusted through or torn loose from the floor slab, locking pins that
are missing, or beams that are not properly fitted and therefore
. “Forklift drivers tend to position pallets too far back
. This means that the rear beams are often subjected to heavier loads than
the ones in front, but hardly anyone notices that,” says Hardus.
Angels in the warehouse
One photograph shows a beam that is firmly
to the uprights. Too securely, in Hardus’s view. “Anyone who
accidentally lifts the beam with their forks will pull the entire racking out of the floor. How dare
people still work here? There’s bound to be a
lot of little angels flying about. For some inexplicable reason, racking collapses
shelving always happen in the evening, at night, at the weekend or during holidays, at
at times when nobody is at work.”
Hardus does have an explanation for many of these faults.
Take, for example, a driver who turns his forklift truck too early and hits a pillar
. Or a driver who, with the forks tilted forwards, is stowing a pallet and
tips the rear beam. “It’s impossible for these drivers not to
feel it. How do we get these people to report it when they hit something? And
look at this photo. Here, someone has tried to remove a kink
out of a upright. As if the load-bearing capacity hadn’t been reduced by that
bend. What on earth is someone like that trying to achieve?”
’s ‘Swiss cheese model’ One floor up in the building of
the freight forwarders’ organisation EVO – the venue for Warehouse Day – Willem
Stehouwer is leading a workshop on safety around battery charging stations. He begins with
the example of an accident in which a sequence of events
led to a traction battery exploding. “I’m an avid viewer of the
TV programme Air Crash Investigation. Time and again, it shows that an
accident often has multiple causes,” says Stehouwer.
He introduces the Swiss cheese model, which was developed
by the English psychologist Reason, and applies it to battery charging stations. This
model shows that many accidents occur because there are failures at various levels
: the organisation is not professional enough, the operation is
too complex, the equipment is substandard, procedures are not followed, etc.
“This model shows that staff form the last line of defence.”
Taking responsibility
Stehouwer argues – just as Hardus, in fact, does –
that warehouse staff should not be viewed merely as a risk, but as an
‘asset’ that can improve safety. After all, a warehouse where no mistakes are
and where no risks exist is, after all, an illusion. Therefore, ensure that
staff are aware of those risks, are encouraged to
think carefully about every action they take and to identify hazards. “People are
an asset, provided they are given the opportunity to take responsibility. If they do not
know what is going on, they pose a risk.”
Marcel te Lindert - journalist logistics and supply chain
