christopher Harper, Author at DJ Products

GM Uses a Hologram to Examine Ergonomic Issues

General Motors has a global manager for ergonomics and The Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne recently published and article stating that General Motors will spend $275 million in its state to build newer versions of some of its most popular vehicles. They added the interesting fact that “GM uses a three-dimensional hologram of an average worker to evaluate whether certain tasks in the assembly process are too demanding.”

You may not have global operations or one person in charge of ergonomics as GM does but you will likely need to consider some of the same questions that GM does.

• How far do your operators need to reach to perform work tasks?
• Can we afford to spend money to hire and train new workers if current employees suffer injuries?
• What would be the average cost of a worker’s compensation claim for our company? How will that affect our financial outlook?
• How can we make sure that our workers stay safe as they age?

Here at DJ Products, Inc. we specialize in finding electric or motorized cart tug solutions that either:
• Eliminate the strains and pains of manually pushing or pulling heavy carts, equipment, or materials.
• Are less costly, smaller, and more maneuverable then traditional electric equipment used for moving carts and equipment; like forktrucks, walkies, or motorized riding tugs.

You do not have to sacrifice your employee’s wellbeing to make your products or meet quotas. There are ergonomic material handling solutions that can get the job done. Call us at 800-686-2651 and a Sales Engineer will help you pinpoint the right application for you.

Ergonomic Mobile Applications

We recently read about a mobile app that was designed to help improve ergonomics in the workplace. With this app, people can see photos different postures that might lead to injury at work and get information on ways to improve posture as well as learn about exercises they can do at work to reduce injury. This is a great way to increase awareness about the importance of correct posture.

However, before the term “app” was used to refer to programs created for mobile devices, it was part of word “application.” And for some people, a mobile app will not be enough to reduce injury in the workplace but a mobile application that they can use as they complete their work tasks can make all the difference.

A DJ Products Industrial Power Mover can eliminate the strain of manually pulling heavy products, parts carts and wheeled equipment. Our material handling solutions or “mobile apps” can also eliminate bulky, expensive lift trucks.

Our CartCaddy power movers comes in many different shapes and sizes to handle wheeled applications that operate with racks, carts, and casters. They are designed to move with employees so they do not have to overexert themselves to push or pull in ways that can damage the musculoskeletal system.

If you have seen a number of workers who need to go on disability due to injuries that relate to ergonomic issues, isn’t it time to apply a different kind of material handling solution?

Call us at 1-800-686-2651 so we can help you find material handling solutions that fit your workplace.

It’s No Joke, Safety Should Be First in Your Warehouse!

Safety first. This should be the watch word of every industry, regardless of anything else. Your employees should be the most important aspect of your business or industry, and their safety must be paramount above all.

At DJ Products, we pride ourselves on the industrial tugs we make. Certainly, they are the best in the business, but using them to move heavy loads means safety first for your employees. And that’s the bottom line.

Physical Demands

Pulling, pushing and lifting impart a high degree of force on both your skeleton and your muscles. Granted, lifting small boxes or pulling lightweight carts is not that great of a strain, but when you get into moving things like dumpsters, vehicles and even aircraft, you don’t want to strong arm them. Moving large items like those, even with the best manual system, may be an accident waiting to happen.

The DJ Products Ergonomic Load Calculator

If you want to find out what it takes to move objects, use our Ergonomic Load Calculator. You can punch in the required numbers, such as weight, terrain, floor condition and other related factors, and it will give you an idea of the force needed to move a particular object. Knowing these figures will let you know what “safety first” means, up front, no matter what moving job is required.

For more information about the easy and safe ways to move your heavy loads around, or for other industrial cart movers or industrial tugs, please contact DJ Products. We have the easiest and safest moving solutions, like trailer movers or small aircraft tuggers, for any industrial need.

How Could YOU Use the Wagon Caddy Tow Tractor?

Of course an electric cart mover would benefit your warehouse by speeding up material handling — but it can also bring fundamental improvements to the way you operate. With our Wagon Caddy tow tractor, more of your employees can handle heavy loads. And they can move things easily through tight spaces anywhere in the warehouse. It opens up a ton of possibilities to get more done.

Make Picking and Stocking a Breeze

Moving up to 3000 lbs. at up to 5 mph, the Wagon Caddy tow tractor makes material handling easier and simpler. Whether a worker needs to move one small box or a heavy load of equipment, he or she can load it on the Wagon Caddy and hop on for the ride. Less walking, less carrying, and less strain — in other words, more productivity with fewer injuries.

Get More Out of All Your Employees

Not all your employees need to be strapping young men and women. Hire smart and reliable people and the Wagon Caddy lets you worry less about muscular strength and physical conditioning. Just about anyone can operate our electric cart movers.

Make Warehouse Logistics Easier

With maneuverable motorized carts for hauling materials around the warehouse, your logistics get easier. You can plan on easily moving heavy, awkward-to-carry items from point A to point B. Employees can even ride on the Wagon Caddy tow tractor and navigate through narrow spaces. Simply put, this electric cart automates and speeds up labor — and that productivity boost makes warehouse management easier.

Check out the versatile and powerful WagonCaddyR/W and call our Sales Engineers at 1-800-686-2651 for more info.

Ergonomically Designed Tugs Let You Transport Large Equipment

Our material handling solutions are compact, battery powered “walk behind” units that can help people transport heavy loads with control in numerous situations. Whether you have plenty of room in which to maneuver or you need to move something within a tight, difficult space, we may have an electric or motorized cart tug that can help. You would be surprised at how the proper design makes it possible for a little machine to allow you to move something very heavy. The machine does not need to be as big as or larger than the object being moved when it is engineered properly.

Airplanes?
Yes, you can move an airplane with our aircraft tug. And when we say you, we mean that you can complete this task on your own using the power of our aircraft tug.

Vehicles?
Our car pusher and trailer movers can move vehicles and pieces of equipment with that have straight wheels or are on a rail.

Dumpsters?
Most people wouldn’t try to move an airplane, alone but they might consider themselves strong enough to push a dumpster…what they don’t factor in is the strain this can cause. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean that you should do it. A DJ Products dumpster mover can help you avoid unnecessary muscle strain and pain.

At DJ Products, our goal is to provide solutions for material handling solutions that are ergonomically correct, safe, and cost effective. If you are wondering just how one of our products can help you, feel free to call us at 800-686-2651 and talk to one of our Sales Engineers.

Use Our Ergonomic Load Calculator to Improve Workplace Safety

DJ Products offers you material handling solutions that give the opportunity to improve work functions for your employees. And since we know that having employees who are working proficiently and avoiding injury is exactly what you need, we also offer some things to make it easier to complete the work your work as well.

Our Ergonomic Load Calculator is designed to assist the Ergonomist, Safety and Health Specialist, and other professionals interested in improving health and safety practices in their workplace. Perhaps in the past you “guesstimated” what it would take to move certain loads or you relied on previous data. While there is nothing wrong with relying on experience, it also helps to update figures and make certain that you are calculating based on current needs. Conditions may have changed since last you checked or you may have assigned new employees to certain tasks and you need to be certain they will able to complete the work.

The calculator is designed to estimate the amount of horizontal force necessary to move loads (on wheels) using inputs from particular workplace environments. These forces are those required to move loaded carts, castered equipment or machinery on wheels, or product being propelled down an assembly line. The calculator will combine conditions related to the state of the “vehicle health”, floor condition, terrain and footing as well as the weight of the load being moved in estimating these forces.

If you do not have the resources to call in a consultant to help you, you can use a tool like our Ergonomic Load Calculator to make your workplace safer.

Ignoring Ergonomics Can Lead to Injury

We discussed “The Scientific Roots and Business Applications of Ergonomics” to give you some background on this topic and help you to understand why employers need to think of ergonomics as more than a buzzword; it is a useful science that can make your workplace more productive and profitable. DJ Products designs material handling solutions that are not simply designed to get the job done or move objects from one place to another; they are designed to help your employees avoid painful injuries as they do their work.

The injuries that result from ignoring ergonomics are very real. Some can take an employee away from work immediately; others result in wear and tear over time and gradually make it more difficult for employees to complete tasks.

These kinds of injuries are caused not just by repetitive motions but also by forceful motion, which Empowher.com defines as including “actions like lifting things that are too heavy, working on bolts that are rusted on, or a squeezing motion that is too frequent for comfort or too hard for the hand.”

Here are some of the conditions you can help your employees to avoid:

Lumbar (lower back) injuries– “caused by bending, lifting, pulling, pushing and twisting improperly.”

Tennis elbow– the elbow becomes painfully inflamed after the forearm has been repeatedly rotated with too much force or too often

Rotator cuff injury – it becomes painful to move the shoulder and arthritis may result from repeated arm movements, especially repeated use of the arms over the head

Tendinitis– various joints become painfully inflamed because of bad posture and repetitive movements

Star Trek’s Vision of Material Handling Flawed

The legendary television show Star Trek and the franchise’s many spin-offs brought the future to the present. Many of those futuristic gizmos sparked the imaginations of young inventors resulting in tools, electronics and appliances that are commonplace today. So I was surprised to see what looked suspiciously like an ordinary forklift truck creeping along the space dock floor in the newest Star Trek movie. Of course, the good news is that the material handling industry appears to be alive and well in the 24th century. However, with their staggering accident and injury rate, you’d think that engineers of the future would have come up with a more efficient, more cost-effective, more ergonomic tool for moving material and equipment from place to place than antiquated forklifts.

This is one place where the generally forward-thinking minds who envision the Trek universe got it wrong. Even in our century, forklift trucks are already on their slow way out. Spurred by safety issues and high operating and maintenance costs, a growing number of savvy business and industry leaders are choosing to replace their forklifts with safe, fuel-efficient, ergonomically-designed, motorized material handling carts and movers. A few centuries from now, I can envision sleekly-designed material handling movers gliding silently on cushions of air above the floor surface, either completely automated or guided by shiny robots; but primitive forklifts? Surely the material handling industry will have progressed beyond that old dinosaur by then!

Companies that have replaced their forklift trucks with ergonomically-designed motorized carts are already realizing decreased accident/injury rates and enjoying the accompanying significant savings in medical, insurance, worker’s compensation and disability costs. Every year forklift accidents are responsible for 100 worker deaths — 25% from overturns — and more than 20,000 injuries. Ergonomically-designed CartCaddies promote operator control and safety with their walk-behind design, strategically placed ergonomic controls, and easy maneuverability.

And when it comes to maintenance costs, sure to be a factor when you’re building mega-trillion dollar starships, battery-operated CartCaddies win over forklifts hands down. The average annual battery/maintenance cost of operating an ergonomic electric CartCaddy is around $300 per year. Compare that to forklifts where operating and maintenance costs comprise 80% of the total cost of ownership over the life of a unit. Annual forklift fuel costs alone can run from $15,000 for gas and diesel units to $3,000 to $8,000 for electric and battery-operated units.

If you want to experience the future of material handling today, contact a DJ Products ergonomic sales engineer and ask about our full line of CartCaddy products.

New Side-Steer Powered Cart Handles Long Parts

Long parts or equipment that overhang the ends of the cart have always been a challenge to move. Objects that overhang the transport cart make it impossible for operators to safely push or pull loads from the end of the cart; they just can’t get physically close enough to get a safe handhold or exert proper force. Overhanging loads are generally too heavy to be pushed or pulled by a single worker and their length makes maneuvering these loads particularly awkward and unsafe. Problems with reach length, load balance and load stability even make use of traditional motorized tuggers unproductive and unsafe. The length and cumbersome placement of oversized loads makes it impossible for tuggers built to handle normal loads to safely reach under an oversized product or piece of equipment to grab and connect to the cart, much less guarantee safe transport and maneuvering by the operator.

DJ Products, the nation’s foremost manufacturer of ergonomically-designed motorized carts and powered cart movers, has solved the problem of safely transporting oversized loads with the introduction of its new side-steer powered cart. The unique side-steer design of this self-propelled cart allows the operator to safely walk behind and to the side of oversized loads, providing clear sight lines and safe, easy maneuvering of heavy, extra-long parts and equipment no matter how far they overhang the transport cart. Visit our website to watch a video of DJ Products’ new side-steer powered cart in action.

Capable of hauling loads up to 5,000 pounds, DJ Products’ ergonomic design ensures that the cart, not the worker, shoulders the load. The conveniently-located variable-speed twist grip is designed to reduce the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome while easily allowing the operator to move forwards and backwards at speeds up to 3 mph. Ergonomic design allows workers to perform their jobs more efficiently and comfortably by allowing equipment to be adjusted to the size of the worker. Awkward and unsafe work postures that lead to tired and cramped muscles, longer and more frequent work breaks, and disabling musculoskeletal injuries are eliminated.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reports that one worker in every 200 experiences an overexertion injury. Annually, overexertion injuries cost American businesses more than 12 million lost work days and over $1 billion in compensation costs. According to a study published in the New Hampshire Business Review, every dollar invested in ergonomics reaps a $4 savings in medical, insurance, workers’ compensation and lost work day costs. To find out how DJ Products’ new side-steer powered cart can safely maneuver overhanging loads and save you money, talk to one of our ergonomic specialists today.

The Scientific Roots and Business Applications of Ergonomics

In “Revisiting the Roots of Ergonomics,” ergoweb.com acknowledges that for many, the idea of ergonomics is nothing more than an advertising gimmick, but stresses that true ergonomics is more than a marketing label–it’s science.

Polish scholar Wojciech Jastrzebowski crafted the word “ergonomics” in 1857 when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. This was the time when large swaths of the world’s population had gone from farm to factory. These workers used machines to do their work and in some ways they were seen as parts of a larger machine and were not always viewed as or treated as human.

However,

” According to Jastrzebowski, if we mismanage ourselves or others, not only will we achieve little or no gain, we may very well cause bigger problems.”

“Big business or small employer, the modern work world has a bottom line – profit. Make human work easier and more productive and it will increase the wealth and well being of the individual, the company, and the society. “

Ergoweb.com uses a resort to illustrate this point, noting that if a resort staff is able to carry out their work comfortably, this will make the resort a pleasant place to stay. However, if a resort is staffed with disgruntled workers, even the beautiful scenery will in not induce visitors to return to a place with an unpleasant atmosphere.

DJ Products makes material handling solutions such as cart pushers and power pullers for a number of industries, including the hospitality industry. You can call one of our Sales Engineers at 800-686-2651 for a recommendation on your proper solution.