Warehouses can be hazardous environments, especially if designed incorrectly and inappropriately, lacking in safety features or poorly maintained. In Sweden, all companies are required by law to ensure that their employees work in a safe warehouse environment using safe equipment. There are both national and Euro-pean safety standards to consider when checking whether your warehouse fulfils the requirements.
The Swedish Work Environment Authority has issued provisions (AFS 2006:4), for example, offering guid-ance on safety as regards pallet racks and other storage racks. The requirements include, for example, racks being marked with maximum loads by section and storage shelf, firmly anchored and fitted with col-lision and slide-through guards. On an international level, we have the European standards (SS-EN 15635, SS-EN 15629 and SS-EN 15512), stipulating how racking should be sized and designed. These standards describe, among other things, rack design and assembly and the handling of different types of warehouse fittings, from planning to the handling of damaged components.
Although there is still a great deal of variation in compliance with the standards, things are steadily improv-ing. Safety awareness among companies is considerably greater today than it was ten years ago. One of the reasons for this is that today we work at so much greater heights, which means greater demands on safety features.
The most common accidents seen in warehouse environments involve collision damage, such as to pallet rack structural components. Goods dropped from forklifts, due to procedural shortcomings or careless-ness, are another common type of accident. Poor quality pallets and goods falling from racks due to a lack of safety considerations are other common problems.
