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Typical Risk Factors associated with loading/unloading pallets placed on the floor are:
- Repetitive bending to load and unload boxes or materials.
- Sustained bending in some operations, for example, to un-box items on the pallet.
- Reaching across a pallet to stack or remove boxes and materials.
- Twisting to stack or remove boxes and materials.
Why is this a problem?
These tasks combine several ergonomic risk factors all at once (repetition, awkward posture, the forces on the low back from lifting heavy items) to become high-risk activities. Even more of an issue is handling a load that is far away from the body and/or below the knees. These movements, especially lifting a heavy load, generate very high forces on the low back (10-20 times the weight of the load).
What can be done?
These high-risk tasks can be improved fairly easily with off-the-shelf work positioners (pallet lift tables and turntables). It is unnecessary to load or unload pallets placed on the floor. A wide selection of products from many vendors can address a variety of situations, whether materials are on open bottom skids, or pallets, and whether materials are moved with forklifts or manual pallet jacks.
Benefits
Lift tables allow pallets to be placed at waist height to minimize bending. Turntables allow pallets to be easily rotated to minimize reaching and eliminate walking around the pallet. Together, lift tables greatly reduce the ergonomic risk factors and decrease worker fatigue. Further, because less time is spent bending, reaching, and walking, materials can be palletized/de-palletized faster, resulting in higher productivity.
Products
Lift tables are typically hydraulic (powered by an electric motor) or pneumatic (designed to be powered by air). There is also a spring actuated self-leveling type that is designed to maintain a constant working height a weight is added or removed.
A variety of pallet lift tables can be seen on manufacturer’s Web sites such as www.bishamon.com, www.liftproducts.com, and www.southworthproducts.com.
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