Tag: Business Tips

Material Handing Solutions Make Light Work of Heavy Loads

Investing in material handling solutions is a way to boost morale among current employees and show prospective employees that you are a forward-thinking employer that gives workers what they need to get the job done.

A number of our material handling solutions have been designed so your employees do not injure themselves pushing or pulling loads that seem simple but will really strain them more than they imagine. We also have material handling solutions for loads that are clearly too cumbersome for someone to move using his or her own strength. Although these loads do require mechanical assistance, any old machine will not do. Please call our Sales Engineers at 800-686-2651 for a recommendation on your proper solution.

For example, the CartCaddyHD cart mover chain drive is a heavy-duty battery powered mover designed to push or pull equipment up to 50,000 pounds. It works well on carts with casters or carts on rails that go straight forward or backwards. Also, heavy trailers with lots of tongue weight can easily be lifted and moved with the CartCaddyHD Cart Mover. Check out this video where two people are moving a trailer using two CartCaddyHD Cart Mover chain drives.

We also offer the RiderCaddy battery powered tug so that a worker can push, pull, or maneuver carts and heavy trailers–either sitting or standing to pull the load. Another advantage of the RiderCaddy is that it allows you to consolidate tasks; carts that previously required the effort of more than one person can now be moved using just one person, freeing up the other workers for other tasks.

Get Ergonomic Material Handling Solutions and Retain Older Workers

Some older workers, particularly those who work in jobs that require them to use a certain amount of physical strength, are feeling nervous these days. They worry that if it seems like they cannot handle their work, they may see themselves replaced by younger workers. This fear may cause some older workers to attempt too much in order to prove their value to an organization. They may injure themselves not because they are too old, but because they strain themselves to prove their worth.

Today’s organizations need people of various ages to work together. Older workers have experience and know-how that younger workers do not have; young workers have fresh perspectives that can energize operations. Rather than lose older workers, you can see to it that all of your employees have ergonomic material handling equipment that prevents fatigue, muscle strain, and other injuries. You are probably well aware that it is costly to recruit, hire, and train a slew of new employees, so why not invest in making sure the ones you already have remain on the job?

A DJ Products Power Puller can maneuver in extremely tight spaces and ease the work of transporting hospital carts, laundry carts, maintenance carts and parts carts. These types of carts typically are less than 1500 lbs. and are generally maneuvered manually. Due to the nature of these carts’ uses, some organizations mainly assign elderly employees to maneuver them but our power pullers can also help younger employees as well. If our battery power puller is used, risks of fatigue and injury to valuable workers can be reduced.

Ergonomic Equipment Benefits Aging Workforce

America’s workforce is aging. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of workers aged 65 and older increased 101% from 1977 to 2007, nearly twice the rate for total employment — and that doesn’t even reflect the aging Baby Boomer population, the first wave of which is just hitting 65 this year. Slightly more than 50% of older workers now work full-time. From 2006 to 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects older workers aged 55 to 64 to increase by 36% and workers over the age of 65 to increase by 80%.

The graying of America’s workforce means that business and industry will increasingly need to accommodate the physical strength and endurance limitations of older bodies. Ergonomic equipment and practices will become increasingly important, both to protect workers’ health and welfare and to enable workers of variable abilities to perform the same job. Ergonomics allows businesses to fit the job to the person — no matter the worker’s size, age, gender or physical abilities — instead of forcing the worker to torque his body into unnatural and uncomfortable positions to make the equipment work or get the job done.

Manual material handling injuries account for approximately 35% of workers’ compensation claims. Injuries to the back and upper extremities caused by reaching, lifting and carrying result in an estimated 44% of all lost time injuries. As workers age, the risk of injury increases. The bottom line is that without ergonomically-designed equipment and the institution of ergonomic practices at workstations, you can expect your injury rate — and medical/disability costs — to increase as the age of your workforce goes up. However, ergonomic equipment can level the playing field.

Ergonomic equipment that helps to lift, position and move materials and finished products takes the burden off workers, insures worker safety, and increases worker productivity. Ergonomic equipment improves worker safety and productivity when bending, twisting and reaching are required. Ergonomic design can also allow the height and tilt of containers to be adjusted for easier access. Ideally, you should utilize ergonomic principles in every aspect of your workplace operations to promote worker safety and productivity. As a bonus, you’ll build good morale and save money.

DJ Products is the national leader in ergonomically-designed motorized and battery-operated material handling carts and cart movers. We offer a complete line of powerful, compact, ergonomically-designed material handling products for every application. Contact us today for personalized help meeting your material handling needs.

Working in the Crowd

Some positions require material handling equipment that is powerful enough to tackle heavy loads reliably, but that is small and easily maneuvered to where it can weave in and out of tight corners among crowded areas.

Consider feeding times in places like hospitals, nursing homes and institutions – many of the residents of these environments are incapable of visiting a cafeteria so there food must be delivered.  In buildings that have potentially thousands of residents who are on a tight schedule, feeding time can be a very busy time.  Individually carrying meals to the residents is completely impractical, but large manual carts could be too cumbersome to move throughout hallways where there will be residents/patients and other members of the staff constantly moving.

These aren’t atmospheres where the hallways can be tied up for extended periods of time for food service; meals need to be delivered on schedule, quickly and without blocking access to other areas of the unit.

This is where equipment like the Parts CaddyLite from DJ Products becomes a necessity.  This super efficient, quiet and powerful little cart is easy enough to maneuver that even crowded hospital hallways are easily navigated.  Food and supplies can be easily delivered without interfering with other necessary operations and without causing any excess noise that could potentially disrupt residents or patients.

The Parts CaddyLite is easy to use and designed with both efficiency and safety in mind.  With a variable speed adjustment, the job can be completed as quickly as is necessary, but without putting anyone’s safety at risk and the battery is capable of lasting for two whole shifts on a single charge – so reliability will never be an issue.  If your business requires that your employees be capable of delivering goods on time, without fail in an environment that has close quarters and crowds – the Parts CaddyLite will deliver every time.

Save Money with a Shopping Cart Retriever

We see shopping carts everywhere and think little of them but if you are a retailer who offers them to customers they are one of the many items that you must account for. A DJ Products Shopping Cart Retriever can save you money on to separate fronts:

Reduce Employee Injury
Shopping cart retrievers are great labor-saving devices. Employees that have to round up shopping arts risk possible injury from the physical labor and must deal with weather conditions such as extreme heat and cold, rain, snow and hail. Providing your employees with this mechanical assistance means you lessen the chances that one of them gets injured retrieving carts or calls in sick because of heat exhaustion. And since cart retrieval tends to be the kind of task assigned to new or low-ranking employees, you may not make these employees excited to do this work but you can make this work easier because retaining employees you have trained also saves you money.

Lose Fewer Shopping Carts
The other way that a shopping cart retriever can save you money is pretty simple: The faster you get cart rounded up, the less likely it is that stray carts will be removed from your property. You may lose some carts here and there, but overall you do not want to see a number of your shopping carts either abandoned or being pushed around other parts of town. Retailers have been used to absorbing the loss of shopping carts but you can be proactive and see to it that your carts remain on your property for your customers to use.

Call 800-686-2651 to speak with one of our Sales Engineers about cart retrievers and other material handling solutions.

Got Power Movers for Industrial Uses? Get Electric Carts for Your Office, Too

At DJ Products, we make a number of material handling solutions that are used in warehouses, hospitals, hotels and a number of other workplaces where workers need to transport heavy loads. And if you are already using our products in these areas, then you know that our power movers and trailer movers eliminate the pain and strain of manually pulling and pushing a heavy cart and wheeled equipment and are also less costly, smaller, and more maneuverable than traditional powered equipment.

But have you also considered using a simple electric cart for other areas of your enterprise? People in your offices may have need of an electric cart for transporting office supplies—boxes of paper, printer cartridges, samples for demonstrations, food orders for group meetings, and presentation materials such as projectors.

Just as you do not want the staff on the industrial side of things becoming strained, you also do not want your office staff hurting themselves either. There is a temptation for people in offices to think that they can just carry heavy loads on their own since they are not doing the kind of heavy lifting that warehouse workers do on a regular basis. They may not have an appreciation for the kind of musculoskeletal strain that carrying a cumbersome load ‘just this once’ can produce.

You and your busy staff will appreciate how our electric cart arrives charged and requires no assembly, so you can put it to use right away. In fact once you have an electric cart for use in the office, you will wonder how you managed without it.

Changes Coming to U.S. Workforce

If the current economic downturn has revealed any truths, it’s that the basic premise upon which employer-employee relations has been based in America is changing and must continue to evolve. Business owners can no longer afford to assume the role of in loco parentis. The cost of comprehensive health care and lifelong pensions has simply become too great for employers to be expected to take care of their employees the way they did 50 or even 20 or 10 years ago.

Gone are the gold watch days when people could expect to find a job fresh out of high school or college and stay with the company until retirement 30 years later. Employees no longer feel that kind of loyalty toward their employers any more. And technology is changing so rapidly that business owners can’t guarantee that today’s job will be needed five years from now. Naturally, these aren’t new ideas. Like all things, the business world is always evolving; technological advances seeming to speed change with each coming year. What’s new is that long-standing employee groups like the United Auto Workers are finally realizing that the employer-employee patterns that worked for their grandparents simply aren’t viable in today’s workplace.

With unemployment at a 25-year high, jobs may be scarce now; but work will return. But when it does, jobs are likely to be different. Both employers and employees should prepare themselves to face a workplace that may be vastly different from the one we enjoyed before the economy fell apart. In its May 25, 2009 issue, Time magazine addressed these issues, predicting a workplace that is “more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure.” According to Time, the next generation of business owners and managers will bring new values to a business world where women will control an increasingly bigger slice of the pie. With the demise of the steel industry and potentially terminal illness of the auto industry, Time also sees jobs leaving the Midwest in droves and moving to Texas and the Southwestern states or Georgia and Florida.

Job expectations, business education, career paths, benefits, retirement, work-life balance, environmental savviness, management style, office spaces and manufacturing are all in for some major upheaval. Next time we’ll explore coming changes in the business world.

Six Sigma + Ergonomics = Productivity Gains

Implementation of a comprehensive ergonomics program is often initiated by a business for the obvious safety and financial benefits realized in reduced workplace injuries and their attendant costs. What many business owners fail to realize are the significant productivity gains possible when ergonomic practices and ergonomically-designed equipment are adopted. Businesses that practice Six Sigma have been quick to see the potential for sustained productivity gains when ergonomics are integrated into workplace practices.

Utilization of the 5-step Six Sigma process can help a business build a successful and sustainable ergonomics program that will not only produce impressive immediate production gains, but sustain and continue to improve those results over the long-term. Six Sigma practitioners have found that adoption of ergonomic practices and use of ergonomic equipment optimizes worker performance, reduces production cycle time, increases cost competitiveness, and empowers workers. The end result is increased production, improved product quality, a happier workforce committed to improvement, and a satisfyingly positive impact on your bottom line.

Six Sigma’s disciplined, process-oriented approach to problem solving involves five steps that are easily applied to development of a comprehensive ergonomics program:

Define. It’s important to know what you’re working toward, so the Six Sigma process begins by establishing the goals to be achieved. Clearly define the problems to be addressed by reviewing injury, illness and workers’ compensation claim data for commonalities. Production bottlenecks, quality issues, rework costs, and warranty costs are other problem indicators. Don’t neglect the important area of staff morale. High absenteeism is indicative of low morale. After defining problem areas, establish specific goals for improvement in each area. You’ll also need to determine tracking metrics and establish support and educational resources.

Measure. In order to correctly measure improvement, you need to pinpoint your starting point. Collect information about your workers and their abilities. Define the parameters and potential risk of each task, paying particular attention to potential stressors, including site lines, posture, reach required, force expended, repetition, vibration, noise levels, work environment temperature, etc. Collect data about the individual steps required to perform each task.

Analyze. Analyze the data collected to discover the root cause of each problem. Evaluate and identify risks associated with each task. Don’t neglect to talk to the workers who actually perform each task. They can provide astute insight into what works, what doesn’t and how to improve the situation. Before implementation, carefully evaluate potential process improvements, equipment and tools for their ability to solve the problem as well as risk potential. Determine and prioritize improvements to be introduced into the workplace.

To be continued Friday

Peering Into Business’ Future

If America’s future workforce is going to be “more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure,” as Time magazine prophesizes in its May 13, 2009 issue, it indicates that the American business paradigm as we know it is going to go through some major upheavals in the coming decade or two. Time suggests that American business is teetering on the cusp of major change. Powerful social forces have pushed us toward this edge, and the current economic disaster appears ready to tip us over and send us careening in new directions.

What’s driving the coming changes?

  • The Baby Boomer generation has been an unstoppable force since its inception. Sheer numbers have changed the focus of society each time Boomers have entered a new life phase. Now poised to enter retirement, America’s most populous demographic will again shift the country’s emphasis, this time to health care and aging issues. By 2030, one-fifth of American citizens will be over the age of 65, with the greatest growth in the over 85 demographic. As they have from the beginning, Boomers will drive the country’s business, social and political agendas. Expect growth in health care, pharmaceuticals, medical aids and equipment, security and alert services, home care, transportation and mobility, shop-at-home opportunities and travel. But don’t count Boomers down and out yet. The last of the Boomers won’t retire for another 20 years and many plan to and will be able to work into their 80s. With far fewer workers moving up to replace them, American business owners need to prepare for a grayer workforce.
  • The new generation of managers entering the business world seems to have been plugged in since birth. Quick to embrace new technology, they’re more comfortable in front of a computer checking their email and Facebook accounts or texting and twittering than they are communicating face-to-face. Expect business communication and social interaction to change to reflect the fast-paced, multi-tasking, solitary preferences of the tech-savvy earbud generation. This is the generation that will take integrated technology to new levels not yet even imagined. Business has already begun to lose its brick and mortar walls as more people work remotely. Expect the next generation to blow them away. The days of the cubicle are numbered!

More on Monday

Part 1: Why Businesses Fail

Almost daily I read about the failure of one business or another in the business section of my local newspaper. The economy is down, credit is tight and fuel prices are through the roof. Naturally these conditions place an additional strain on businesses. But generally when a business fails there were already underlying fissures in its structural foundation that caused it to crack and break under the pressure.

Businesses fail for many reasons, the most likely being one or a combination of the following:

  • Lack of a business plan or failure to update the business plan to account for changes in the industry, economy and society. Business is not static. You should review your business plan annually and adjust it to take advantage of changing markets, new products and technologies, financial incentives, and customer preferences.
  • Lack of current financial data or failure to fully understand financial reports. Finance is the language of business. You don’t have to be able to write it (that’s why you have an accountant or CFO, but you do have to be able to correctly read and understand financial statements.
  • Lack of capital. If you’re starting a business, minimum start-up capital should be enough to cover your first six months of operation. However, once you’re up and running, don’t confuse capital with operating funds or cash flow. Growth capital should be used to grow, improve and expand your business. You should generate enough monthly income to provide a healthy cash flow and cover operating expenses. If your business is in trouble, borrowing more money isn’t the answer. If you can’t service your current debt load, you won’t be able to service an increased debt load.

To be continued