newsworthy
26 DC VELOCITY JULY 2017
www.dcvelocity.com
DCs weigh workplace safety after shooting at UPS facility
After last month’s deadly shooting at a San Francisco package center operated by UPS Inc., logistics firms are re-examining how to strike a balance between tighter security
measures in DCs and the impact of those steps on costs and
operating efficiencies, industry experts said.
Employees at the site were back at work the day after a
disgruntled UPS driver killed three colleagues and wounded
two more during the morning shift change before turning
the gun on himself. The UPS package center is located in an industrial
neighborhood about two miles from
downtown San Francisco.
The shooter was identified as Jimmy
Lam, a 38-year-old package car driver
and 18-year UPS employee. Lam had
filed a grievance with the company in
March complaining of too much overtime and requesting
a cut in working hours, a spokesman for the Teamsters
Union, which represents UPS unionized workers, told the
Associated Press.
Atlanta-based UPS said it uses layers of physical and
technological security at all of its facilities. The company
declined to comment on the motives behind the shooting
or whether it would make any changes relating to security.
A MATTER OF RESOURCES
Most warehouses and DCs lack the resources to make
changes in security practices that could prevent similar
attacks, said Mike Briggs, a partner in Beam LLC, an
Atlanta-based consulting firm. “You can make a very secure
environment, but it’s expensive and you have to maintain
it. Vigilance is always required,” Briggs said in an interview.
Pharmaceutical companies with DCs full of powerful
narcotics are the exceptions, he added. Such facilities
require employees to change into uniforms and leave all
personal items in lockers outside a security gate. Other
security practices include extended background checks,
buddy-system rules barring workers from being alone
in certain rooms, and the use of “man-traps,” which are
rooms designed to stop someone who tries to illegally enter
a building by following closely behind a legitimate employee passing through a card-access door.
However, the cost of implementing those procedures
is beyond the reach of many warehouse operators, and
workplace efficiency is sapped when workers have to pass
through airport-like security to reach the bathroom or take
a lunch break, Briggs said.
When it comes to preventing workplace violence, the
most effective approach is to focus on human resources,
Briggs said. “You can put in [monitoring] systems, and that
can really help with basic loss prevention,” he said. “But for
a disgruntled, unhappy, mentally unhealthy employee, ulti-
mately your best tools are trying to understand that person
and knowing that they need help.”
A company tuned into its work force can track workers’
behavior, note their comments to colleagues, monitor
social media posts, and absorb that input in time to address
potential problems. “It’s cultural [in] knowing you’re cared
for in the workplace. That’s probably the hardest thing
to attain, but it is something that
super-high-attaining organizations are
doing,” he said.
BEYOND ACCESS CONTROLS
It would have been hard for UPS to
prevent the San Francisco incident
because the shooter was employed
at the facility, said Eric Peters, president and CEO of
SensorThink, a logistics technology vendor that provides
Internet of Things (IoT) platforms for automated warehouses. “You look at this situation; it would have been
almost impossible to prevent it, unless you put in mili-tary-style security at the facility, like an embassy,” he said.
Most warehouse security plans employ both a hardware/
technology approach—with devices like digital video cameras, motion sensors, and proximity monitors—and a human
behavior approach, such as carefully screening employees
before they are hired or looking at ways to reduce workplace
stress, Peters said.
However, a security strategy can fall short when companies use it to meet two different goals, protecting both
the facility’s products and its people, he said. While grainy
security cameras might help identify an employee who looted packages, they would not be of much use in preventing
workplace violence.
DCs tend to have a poor record of applying their own
security protocols, Peter said. “Most facilities are very lax;
you have a primitive level of security in these buildings,” he
said. “There might be contact switches at doors, but those
doors are often left open or propped ajar, and you have
employees sneaking out to take smoking breaks.”
That situation may begin to change as rapid advanc-
es in technology drive down the cost of sensors and IoT
networks, allowing companies to track their employees in
real time, Peters said. For example, if every worker carried
a badge with a unique RFID (radio-frequency identifica-
tion) tag, a warehouse could install readers to allow man-
agers to tell whether workers were spending too long in
the breakroom, were lingering in a restricted region of the
warehouse, or had ignored a fire alarm or evacuation order,
he said.
—Ben Ames
