DJ Products, Inc.

Companies that value and respect their workers are proactive about ergonomics, said Peter Budnick, PH.D., founder, president and CEO of Core 3, Ergoweb and Ergobuyer, at a recent material handling conference. “A well formulated ergonomics strategy supports and accelerates continuous improvement in any organization, facility or supply chain.”

Integration of ergonomic practices and equipment into manufacturing and business operations improves productivity, waste reduction, quality control and safety. Ergonomics can operationalize a company’s respect for people, said Budnick, who added that many companies misunderstand ergonomics and therefore don’t recognize its value. He considers ergonomics “essential in an effective continuous improvement system” in any business or industry. 

Ergonomics takes a human-centered approach to task and tool design. It recognizes differences in the individual characteristics and capabilities of workers and strives to accommodate those variables in the design of equipment and structuring of tasks. The goal of ergonomics is to prevent soft tissue, repetitive motion, repetitive stress and musculoskeletal injuries. Nearly half of all lost work days can be attributed to musculoskeletal injuries. These injuries cost U.S. industry more than $61 billion per year in lost productivity and an additional $20 billion in annual medical and workers compensation benefits.

The value of respecting workers has been proven time and again. Toyota has made it a pillar of its business execution plan. When workers are valued, productivity and quality increase while injuries and negativity decrease. Implementation of an ergonomics program is an important way to show workers that you respect them and value their health and safety. In formulating an ergonomics program, evaluate tasks, equipment and work environment for the following factors:

• force applied
• awkward or fatiguing postures
• repetition or frequency
• duration, both of the task and the number of times per day it is performed
• vibration
• contact pressure
• velocity of movement
• environmental factors including lighting, temperature, noise, etc.

The goal of ergonomics is to eliminate the discomfort and stress these factors cause workers. On the DJ Products website, we provide a handy Ergonomic Load Calculator that can assist you in evaluating the force needed to move loads in particular workplace environments. Our experienced staff can assist you in designing ergonomic solutions to that will benefit your workers and increase productivity.

We were delighted to hear from one of our Minnesota brethren this week. Kent Powell of SJF Material Handling, Inc. in Winsted, Minnesota, just a couple of hours down the road from our home office in Little Falls, ran across our blog and dropped us a line.

SJF is a material handling equipment supplier and consultant. For more than 25 years, they’ve been providing new and used material handling equipment from their Minnesota base. Their Genesys division designs and engineers cutting-edge material handling and distribution systems. Services include customized consulting, layout/design, engineering and control programming services for warehousing and distribution-based industries.

You’ll find the SJF Material Handling Blog an interesting read and will want to add it to your list of “favorites.” Their blog focuses in large part on the steel market that provides the raw material for the conveyors, pallets, carousels, rack and other material handling products they sell. It provides readers with another level of insight into the issues that concern our industry today.

DJ Products manufactures ergonomic electric cart pullers and motorized cart pushers for the manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, logistics, automotive, healthcare, hospitality and retail industries. We specialize in ergonomic material handling solutions that eliminate the strain and resultant injury that occurs from manually pushing or pulling carts and wheeled equipment. We’re one interesting cog in the larger material handling wheel, as is SJF Material Handling. We know there are others out there and we want to hear from you.

We invite our readers and others who share our interest in material handling and its applicable industries to share your comments. Alert us to other interesting websites and blogs that we can share with our readers. Drop us a comment if you read an interesting blog post. Share your own experiences or concerns or let us know what you’d like to hear more about. Our goal in creating the DJ Products blog is to share news, information and insights about material handling. We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line.

Material handling offers good growth potential now and for the future. It is also becoming increasingly automated and technical (see our Sept. 29 post). So how can students interested in material handling as a growth career and current workers who want to move up position themselves to be in demand by employers today and into the future?

Industry experts agree that education is the key. While a high school diploma can still get you an entry-level job on the warehouse floor, it will take certified skills to maintain that job as the level of technology accelerates through the material handling, warehousing and logistics industries. Moving up the corporate ladder will increasingly require a bachelor’s degree. If you aspire to a management position, plan on putting in that extra year or two to get your MBA. Some colleges now offer concurrent bachelor/MBA programs and many offer night, weekend and online courses. Executive MBA programs geared to working business professionals provide an accelerated path to a higher degree by recognizing acquired experiential knowledge.

“Going into the future, not many people will have much success in their career progression without professional development of some kind,” warned Mark Ensby, director of Clarkson University’s Engineering & Global Operations Management Department. “The three most important credentialing letters today seem to be ‘MBA.’”

As automation and the global economy drive industry to greater integration, versatility and cross-industry knowledge will be increasingly valued. Students who combine material handling courses with industrial engineering, logistics, supply chain, warehousing, project management and computer systems studies will best position themselves for the future.

Partnerships between industry associations and universities are also expected to increase experiential learning. As it moves toward the future, material handling and associated industrial engineering industries will be looking for graduates with experiential learning, not just theoretical knowledge. “Associations like MHIA are going to play more and more of an important role in leveraging universities as the provider of skilled employees,” predicted Dan Boos, president of consulting firm Gorillas and Gazelles.

Mark Tomlinson, executive director of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, has called for public schools to place greater emphasis on manufacturing as a viable career choice. Industry pressure is expected to increase two-year technical training opportunities in manufacturing, material handling, and industrial engineering fields. Tech schools, some beginning at the high school level, are seen as a quick way of solving the looming worker shortage in these industries. “The challenge is there just isn’t going to be enough of anybody for what’s needed,” Boos said.

“Over their lifetime, many of them (high school grads) will earn more because they started working sooner than those who took four or five years to finish college,” Tomlinson pointed out. “So we’ve got to get away from a good job/bad job mindset and encourage people to get some training.”