Pallet Jack Inspection System
Hello Knights,
I'm hoping to brainstorm some ideas with you all to aid in our compliance with the manual pallet jack inspection requirement.
1910.244(a)(2)(vi)
Each jack shall be thoroughly inspected at times which depend upon the service conditions. Inspections shall be not less frequent than the following:
1910.244(a)(2)(vi)(a)
For constant or intermittent use at one locality, once every 6 months,
I work at a distribution center with countless manual pallet jacks. The above regulation was cited in an internal audit as a noncompliance because formal inspections weren't being documented (or conducted... it was before my time).
I'm trying to work through how to put together a system to easily inventory and maintain the records of inspection for these pallet jacks.
For our fall protection harnesses, we order and issue all harnesses and use a numerical system and an excel workbook. Our employees bring their harnesses with them to the annual fall protection training.
With the pallet jacks, we don't manage the purchasing of them, and they float around the building freely.
I'd say we are pretty pro technology for this application. We have access to a Brady printer, SmartSheet, excel, barcode scanners. I already kind of have an idea as to how to approach this, but given the quantity of pallet jacks we will have to induct, I want to measure twice and cut once, so to speak.
Comments (4)
Your EHS Software Suite is coming out with an Asset Tracking Function that should meet the needs, but it's not available for a few more months
Wow thanks for posting this! I never knew these standards were in place and I have been in this business 50 years, I am also an approved OSHA instructor. I am always amazed how much I still have to learn! This standard like a lot of 1910 is as clear as mud! Couldn't I just tell an OSHA CHSO, "Oh we do not use those pallet often."
In any case the first thing I can think of is if you are a large facility your Maintenance Department may have a Preventive Maintenance System. If so put the inspection of the pallet jacks on their system. When the Maintenance Supervisor gripes about more work, just say the inspection of pallet jack would take all of about 2 minutes.
Next 10 years ago OSHA had an emphasis on ladders. My system for ladder inspection might work for that too. I went out and bought a bunch of cow tags with different numbers. Easy here as I live in WI in many places there are more dairy cows than people. Assign a different number for every pallet jack and zip tie the number to each one! I used our PM system for the ladder inspections as all the ladders belonged to Maintenance in my facility. If you do not have a PM system just put in a reminder in your calendar email system reminding you to have these inspections performed. Might want to send the invites to your supervisors that have pallet jacks in their responsibility reminding this must be done! Come up with a simple inspection form. Again the inspection of a pallet jack should be about two minutes.
Then add this to your safety audits. Plan Do Check Act - PDCA!
This is something I see missed ALL THE TIME when we do audits at various facilities, with most employers saying "I never knew that we were supposed to do that?!", haha. Honestly, if I had to guess, I'd say <50% of the facilities we audit have this inspection program in place at the time of our audit.
As far as tracking, at the facilities I've worked at, we never had a crazy amount of pallet jacks, so we were able to manually track them fairly easily. However, I know that some of our customers implemented some corrective actions after our audits and used some of these techniques:
• Automated work orders every 3-6 months (whichever they prefer, but no less than every 6 months) so that they'd get an alert when they were due, do the inspection, then log it on their work order
• Some have created QR codes and put them on labels to be able to track them
• Some have manually logged them on Excel spreadsheets (or equivalent)
• Some have used third-party software programs that have an "inspections" feature that allows them to track their inspections