Safety accessories for your warehouse – Mirrors, collision protection and co.

In almost every business, a warehouse is necessary: In the office, rather small quantities of printer paper and other office materials are stored. Whereas in production or trade, the warehouse takes on much larger dimensions. The use of floor conveyors and other machines in combination with warehouse employees walking leads to an increased risk potential.

In order to set up and run a warehouse efficiently, certain requirements must be met in terms of warehouse safety. The typical risks must be avoided:

• Fire hazard
• Unmarked Traffic routes or missing Ground markings
• Insufficient lighting
• Slip hazard
• inadequate warehouse equipment
• wrong Working and protective clothing
• Missing barriers

Prevention instead of aftercare is the motto: those who set up storage and production facilities in a well thought-out manner reduce the risk of accidents and avoid expensive repair costs in the event of damage. A prerequisite for optimal production or warehouse planning is therefore the avoidance of downtime due to accidents at work or damage to machinery. With the right safety accessories, these risks can be minimised.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Care is needed when navigating between storage racks. Because where there is high stacking, visibility is often limited. Especially when moving vehicles such as pallet trucks or forklifts where pedestrians are also on the move. Not only between the shelves, but at every difficult-to-see junction or unclear areas, it helps to have a Observation mirrors. With a Panoramic mirrors you can even cover a viewing angle of 180° or 360°. This makes blind spots visible and the mirrors help to increase safety at danger spots. With appropriate signs, workers are additionally sensitised.

Crash protection and. Collision protection

Crash protection bollards and Collision protection on the other hand, are used to protect machinery, racking and fixtures. As the term “impact protection” implies, the aim is to prevent a collision between packaging machines or storage racks and transport equipment such as forklift trucks. In the event of an impact, the forklift truck would hit the impact protection bollard firmly anchored in the floor, but would not damage the machine or the storage rack.

Steel bumper guard

Steel guardrails can be used for the same purpose for securing large areas. Another possible use is to separate traffic routes between vehicles and pedestrians: This way, there is no danger for the pedestrian of being hit by a vehicle. Due to the signal colours yellow and black, crash protection bollards and protective bars attract a lot of attention and are highly visible both indoors and outdoors.The primary purpose of fall protection is to prevent accidents at work: From a height of more than one metre, a barrier must be installed to draw workers’ attention to the danger and prevent a fall.

Protection of storage equipment and machinery

For storage facilities and equipment the DGUV regulation 108-007. It serves as an aid for entrepreneurs in the implementation of occupational safety regulations or accident prevention regulations and assists in the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases. The DGUV regulation can be seen as a guideline for the implementation of safety measures and shows technical solutions.

A Collision protection of at least 0.3 metres in height is compulsory, for example, for fixed shelving at the corner areas if it is loaded or unloaded with non-guided conveyors. So if loading and unloading is carried out using freely moving floor conveyors such as pallet trucks or forklift trucks, a collision guard capable of absorbing an energy of at least 400 Nm must be fitted at the corners. The forces that the safety accessories must withstand are impressively demonstrated in the video: