Industrial Safety and Health for Goods and Materials Services - Chapter 4

Kho đã được lựa chọn trong cuốn sách này bởi vì chức năng của nó là để lưu trữ vật liệu và hàng hoá đã tiếp xúc với lực lượng lao động rất giống với những người phải đối mặt của công nhân trong các giao dịch bán buôn và bán lẻ. Nó thường được đặt trong các nhóm tương tự như ngành giao thông vận tải. Bắc Mỹ phân loại hệ thống công nghiệp (NAICS) liệt kê như sau: Kho bãi và lưu trữ (493000) Kho bãi và lưu trữ (493100) Kho bãi và lưu trữ cơ sở vật...
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Industrial Safety and Health for Goods and Materials Services - Chapter 4 4 WarehousingWarehouses are containers for the transfer and storage of goods and materials.Warehousing was selected to be in this book because its function was to storematerials and goods that made the exposures of the workforce very similar tothose faced by workers in wholesale and retail trades. It is usually housed in thesame grouping as the transportation sector. The North American Industrial Classifi-cation System (NAICS) lists it as follows: Warehousing and storage (493000) Warehousing and storage (493100) Warehousing and storage facilities comprised 13,000 establishments in 2004.These firms are engaged primarily in operating warehousing and storage facilities forgeneral merchandise and refrigerated goods (Figure 4.1). They provide facilities tostore goods; self-storage mini-warehouses that rent to the general public are alsoincluded in this segment of the industry. The deregulation of interstate trucking in 1980 encouraged many firms to add awide range of customer-oriented services to complement trucking and warehousingservices and led to innovations in the distribution process. Increasingly, trucking andwarehousing firms are providing logistical services encompassing the entire trans-portation process. Firms that offer these services are called third-party logisticsproviders. Logistical services manage all aspects of the movement of goods betweenproducers and consumers. Among their value-added services are sorting bulk goodsinto customized lots, packaging and repackaging goods, controlling and managingß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.FIGURE 4.1 Warehousing provides for the orderly staging and storage of goods and materials.inventory, order entering and fulfillment, labeling, performing light assembly, andmarking prices. Some full-service companies even perform warranty repair workand serve as local parts distributors for manufacturers. Some of these services, suchas maintaining and retrieving computerized inventory information on the location,age, and quantity of goods available, have helped to improve the efficiency ofrelationships between manufacturers and customers. Many firms are relying on new technologies and the coordination of processesto expedite the distribution of goods. Voice control software allows a computerto coordinate workers through audible commands—telling workers what items topack for which orders—helping to reduce errors and increase efficiency. Voicecontrol software can also be used to perform inventory checks and reordering.Some firms use radio frequency identification devices (RFIDs) to track and manageincoming and outgoing shipments. RFID simplifies the receiving process by allow-ing entire shipments to be scanned without unpacking a load to manually compareit against a bill of lading. Just-in-time shipping is a process whereby goods arrivejust before they are needed, saving recipients money by reducing their need to carrylarge inventories. These technologies and processes reflect two major trends inwarehousing: supply chain integration, whereby firms involved in production,transportation, and storage all move in concert so as to act with the greatestpossible efficiency; and ongoing attempts to reduce inventory levels and increaseinventory accuracy. The average annual employment for warehousing is 555,800 workers. Thisis approximately 0.4% of the U.S. workforce and 0.7% of the service industryworkforce.ß 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.4.1 PROFILE OF WAREHOUSING WORKERS’ DEATH, INJURIES, AND ILLNESSES4.1.1 DEATHSThere were 27 deaths in the warehousing sector. These deaths account for 0.9% orthe total deaths (2736) in the service industry. As can be noted in Table 4.1, fall wasthe most frequent cause of warehousing deaths.4.1.2 INJURIESThere were 14,620 reported injuries for warehousing workers in 2004. The injuryrate for warehousing was 9.3 per 100 full-time workers, while it was 4.2 and 4.8 forthe service industry and all of private industry, respectively. This alarming injury rateindicates the danger involved in the warehousing sector. The distribution for thenature, body part, source, and exposure (accident type) for the 14,620 injuries arepresented in Tables 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5, respectively.4.1.3 ILLNESSESIn the warehousing sector, 1900 cases of occupational illness were reported; this is1% of the total reported illnesses for the service industry. Table 4.6 provides thebreakdown of the illnesses.4.2 HAZARDS FACED BY WAREHOUSING WORKERSThe fatal injury rate for warehousing is higher than the national average for allindustries. Warehousing is often viewed as not being a very complex operation, buttraffic patterns, fast pace, constant motion, and a myriad of various materials beinghandled and stored lead to exposure to many h ...