BY TOBY GOOLEY, SENIOR EDITOR
INDUSTRIAL TRUCK FLEET MANAGEMENT
TRY AS THEY MIGHT, THEY COULDN’T FIGURE IT
out. A distribution center in Florida was experiencing
an unacceptably high rate of forklift-related product
damage. The lift truck fleet had installed i Warehouse, a
telematics solution from The Raymond Corp., and the
fleet manager had asked the forklift maker
for help in using the system to learn
why there was so much damage. But
the traditional observations—the
time of day, where impacts
were happening, and who
was driving—didn’t turn
up any obvious reasons for
the impacts. Puzzled, the
truck manufacturer and its
customer decided to look
beyond the forklift operation for possible causes,
recalls John Rosenberger,
product manager for i Warehouse Gateway, the system’s
reporting user interface.
Among the things they looked
at was the general environment
inside the building.
Where the DC is located in Florida,
high humidity levels are common, so the
facility monitors humidity levels and has dehumidifiers
in place. That gave the team an idea: compare the relative humidity readings with the forklift impact records
in the telematics system.
“Sure enough, they aligned, and we found the root
cause of the impacts,” Rosenberger says. On days when
thunderstorms were rolling through, the humidity rose
so quickly the dehumidifiers couldn’t keep up. The
concrete floors became wet, and for just an hour or two,
the floor would be slippery. During those times, the
drivers—who are paid on piecework, which motivated
them to drive fast—were prone to sliding, which led to
impacts and product damage.
With that information in hand,
Raymond and its customer found a
way to prevent sliding accidents.
Now, when relative humidity
exceeds a certain threshold,
the DC manager uses the
iControl function in i Warehouse to reduce the maximum speed of the trucks
and then to raise it after
the danger has passed. For
lift trucks that do not have
iControl, the system alerts
drivers to slow down or
speed up via a message on
the i Warehouse monitor display on the truck. According to
Rosenberger, accidents and product damage quickly declined, and
the DC still meets its throughput goals
despite the periodic speed reductions.
THE WMS/LMS CONNECTION
“The Case of the Slippery Floors” is a good example
of how a “big data” approach can be applied to lift
truck fleet management. “Big data” refers to the anal-
ysis of data from multiple sources, often unrelated
and unstructured, to find hidden correlations and
strategicinsight
Analyzing seemingly unrelated data sets can uncover the
hidden causes of lift truck fleet management problems.
Big surprises
from “big data”
