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Welcome to the 19th week of the year! I’m Marty, and I’d like to thank you for joining me here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career! We have several new subscribers that’s joined us recently and I’d like to thank them for clicking that little Subscribe button & encourage you to share your thoughts and suggestions on topics with us by joining our Facebook and Twitter feeds where we can be found by using @whseandops or emailing host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com . I’ll see that we answer or get the answers to each of your questions and try and share as many as we can on the show here. Hey, that’s what WAOC is all about, us learning from each other, breaking into the Operations arena, achieving success within our jobs and if our goals are to turn that job into a Career we’ll try and offer up some experiences and thoughts on planning to accomplish just that!
Two weeks ago, we talked about a couple of things I felt we’re important to us, things I thought we needed to have a little knowledge on to get noticed by our management teams and help ourselves in the Warehouse. One of those things were SDS Books or Safety Data Sheet stations. We received a few questions about them, so I thought maybe we should talk a little more about what they are and why we need to know where there kept and why that’s even important. We’ll check in with our WAOC Safety guy Joe here in a bit and get the thoughts of a professional, I’m certain we’ll all think a little differently after having them explained to us today! I feel they can possibly save us from being permanently disabled in some way or chemically burned or worse. Secondly, it’s one of the first questions a compliance or 3rd party auditor may ask us as an employee, and certainly not lastly it could very well be the Law in certain industries. I think every employee needs to know how to find that information and how to read them quickly, so we’ll know how to treat a spill or contamination should our coworkers or ourselves come in contact with a chemical we’re not familiar with. We all know it’s important to keep even household chemicals put away at home, to protect our children and how we should never mix different detergents, chemicals and solvents or disinfectants at home to clean our bathrooms and kitchens. When we have an emergency at home and call an emergency line, the first thing they reach for is the Safety Data Sheet for the chemical’s name we’re calling about. I have a friend that’s pulled up the sheets on every chemical in his home and reviews them with his family twice a year! He also changes the batteries in the smoke alarms, teaches his children to be aware that cords are snugly inserted into electrical outlets at all times and how extension cords have no use in the home too. Yep, he’s a Safety consultant and has seen the devastating results complacency and not being aware or prepared can cause. I’m always kidding him about his obsession with the subject, but I have to agree his family and children are much safer with that knowledge than I am or most of us probably are.
I’d also had a question about forklifts this week, and it’s came up several times, so I wanted to talk about it as well for a minute. I was asked by an experienced sit down or counter balance lift driver if it was going to be hard for him to learn to drive a stand-up reach lift. As we like to say here at WAOC, experience in our fields is the only teacher, that there’s just no short cuts. None of us are born with a Powered Industrial Equipment gene in us, I don’t feel operating any type of warehouse equipment is really difficult, but we have to be taught how it works. I think its operation starts with understanding how dangerous they can be & that Safety is the first component. If we’ve been taught all the Safety procedures and processes and we act responsibly at all times when using or are around equipment that once we’re shown the controls, an equipment’s uses, and an instructor oversees our certification to operate it we’ll have the knowledge and tools to be successful at it! This gentleman’s been operating the sit-down lift for 4 years and hasn’t had any accidents or incidences, I expressed to him that I felt the learning curve shouldn’t be anything to stress over or be anxious about.
Well, once again I got to rambling on a bit,
Joe, why’d you let me keep blabbing bub? Thanks for your time again Sir, how have you been, I heard you were up in Illinois 2 weeks ago?
JOE – Yes sir, getting around to the issues is kind of a needed thing sometimes. A fresh set of eyes can help see things everyday eyes can’t.
So, Joe tell us about SDS and maybe correct me if I’m over emphasizing it importance?
JOE – Well Marty it’s a very need thing. Not too long ago we underwent the MSDS to SDS change but everything for the most part stayed in place.
Not too long ago we underwent the change from MSDS to SDS, this was only a change in name as the content remained the same.
I always give emphasis to Section 4 and section 8 of the SDS pages. These categories are:
Section 4 = 1st aid and section 8 = required PPE
The absolute must know sections. Of course, being prepared and knowing what’s in those sections ahead of time is what will count when seconds matter.
This information used at the last second AFTER contamination is not the best time to be finding things out for the first time.
So, Joe, when I started operating equipment it was learn as you go kind of. Of course, I was told to be careful, there wasn’t really any kind of structured Safety training and certainly nothing like todays 29CFR1910.178 training, I wish there had been, we’d all of been much better operators. But there’s very few classes available that really teaches us to use the equipment out there. I’m not talking about a certification class, as we’ve discussed here several times an employer should give us that for free. How do you feel or what advice do you have for us first time employees that’s learning to operate equipment and as a Supervisor how do you think we should train a new Associate on them?
JOE – Very carefully,! When it comes to teaching you have to be careful not to teach the wrong thing, the introduction to equipment is very potent and you may cause a bad habit to be taught over and over if you are not careful
Joe I really enjoyed the visit today and as usual I learned a lot from you, Thanks for your time and as always thanks for sharing your knowledge with us here at WAOC Sir.
And a big thank you to all our listeners out there, we appreciate your time! Keep those questions and suggestions coming in, that’s why we keep showing up here each week! Lets all go in tomorrow and identify our SDS stations, maybe bring them up at our start up meeting! It’d be nice to help a peer out by sharing its importance with them!