New MasterCheck App Aims To Improve Safety In The Workplace
This month another company has been cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the USA after multiple hazards caused an employee to suffer fatal injuries. The United States Department of Labor Services says the employee was crushed by a forklift in September of 2019. OSHA has proposed more than USD52,000 in penalties after the portable restroom company was cited for nine violations. OSHA asserts the company failed to adequately train employees in using forklifts, amongst other safety violations.
In the UK, despite “stringent legislation”, the number of serious injuries related to forklift trucks rose from 1000 to 1300 from June 2018 to July 2019 according to Mentor LFT Training’s Technical Manager Andy Cartwright.
The most common requirement of occupational health and safety entities throughout the world is the pre-shift forklift inspection; and for good reason. Pre-shift inspections are designed to be a proactive precaution to identify possible hazardous issues with forklifts and lower the risk of a forklift related injury or fatality.
In July of 2018 Andy Shattock of Plymouth, 55, died when he was trapped underneath his forklift in Torpoint, Cornwall. Mr. Shattock was reversing the forklift down a slope when it hit a curb and rolled, toppling and crushing him. The death was attributed to faulty brakes characterized as “clearly defective and in a dangerous condition”. Had a forklift pre-shift inspection been completed and the brake issue identified and acted upon, this tragedy would likely not have occurred.
With tragedies like that of Andy Shattock, and alarming levels of workplace injuries and deaths related to forklifts, why aren’t more companies complying with regulatory entities around the world and completing pre-shift inspections? While the evidence is somewhat anecdotal, companies report resistance having to do with not unformed habits due to lack of management-initiated processes, management resistance to the cost or not seeing enough value, and the process of using, keeping track of, and filing of paper reports.
In this digital world, and the age of “going green”, a solution to any inadequate arguments for not completing pre-shift inspections has now been eliminated.
The new MasterCheck app automates and simplifies the inspection process by providing operators with a quick and easy way to complete inspections from any type of device. The app remembers the operator and forklift information and quickly populates all identification fields. Operators then complete forklift inspections, repair reports, accident reports and near-miss reports, even including relevant photos, then simply click “send” to have the inspection sent to their supervisor and saved in the cloud. No more looking for lost paper reports – everything is automated.
The operator’s app is synced to the company’s web-based Supervisor Dashboard and provides the supervisor with important operational analytics and management tools including Pass/Fail history sorted by operator or forklift and accident, near miss and repair report graphs full of important data. From the Supervisor Dashboard the supervisor can also set up custom notifications to anyone else in the company regarding any type of occurrence.
Want to add or edit any safety item on a specific inspection? The supervisor can customize inspection forms to suit the company’s specific requirements and the changes will instantly appear on the operators app.
Users of the MasterCheck app with web-based Supervisor Dashboard agree that it remedies any resistance to completing the important pre-shift inspections, while providing insights not available to management before, making the workplace an even safer one.
“We use the app for thirty forklift trucks in our locations throughout North Carolina and Texas, and it’s saving us a tremendous amount of time and paperwork,” said Glen Wegel, VP Operations, Kitchen Cabinet Distributors.
MasterCheck is currently being used by companies throughout the world, and at $19.99USD per year versus as much as $120.00USD per year with traditional paper booklets, the decision to go automate and go paperless is an easy one.
