Subchapter 4.5
Manual workstations and warehouse traffic
This section focuses on safety challenges at workstations and in shared traffic zones within warehouses. You will learn about common risk scenarios involving manned trucks, automated vehicles, and pedestrian movement and explore effective strategies to reduce accidents through physical barriers, fall protection, and structured separation of people and machines.
Safety risks in shared traffic zones
Warehouses, even if highly automized, likely have at least some workstations for order picking and packing. These are increasingly directly interfacing with automatic systems and vehicles.
AGVs and IMRs essentially make traffic safer because of their presence-sensing systems. But in most warehouses manned industrials trucks are still a familiar sight and often mingle with automated vehicles and pedestrian traffic.
Combined, this results in substantial accident risks. Recent statistics show that while figures are slowly decreasing there are still thousands of accidents with industrial trucks every year, some of them with fatal outcomes.
High-risk areas in mixed-traffic warehouses
Workstations and internal traffic result in risks particularly in the following areas and situations:
- Entry/exit openings of automatic machinery interfacing with workstations
Crushing, shearing, drawing-in hazards from moving parts of machinery and loads. - Traffic of manned industrial trucks near workstations
Collisions with workers, especially in brownfield applications with serious space constraints.
Impact and crushing from toppling loads. - Order picking stations (goods to person, person to goods)
Diverse hazards from fixed automation systems.
Residual risks from AGVs and IMRs and their additional handling systems. - Mingling of pedestrian and vehicle traffic (both autonomous and manned)
Collisions. - Workplaces at a height in multi-teared installations
Fall hazard.
Safeguards for mixed-traffic warehouse spaces
The solutions for safety in AGV and IMR applications have already been discussed in the section “Mobile autonomous machinery” above, those for safety of entry/exit openings in the section “Fixed automation systems”.
Application of the area concept encouraged by EN 619 will result in improved safety at workstations near conveying systems (compare section “Conveying systems”). But what can be done to increase general traffic safety?
Use:
- Pedestrian barriers with self-closing gates to separate...
...walkways from aisles meant for vehicle traffic; this is a good idea even if the vehicles are (mainly) autonomous, because it reduces interference by people and thereby improves efficiency.
...workstations near traffic lanes or high-traffic areas; add impact protection near the floor to ensure workers cannot be hit by vehicles. - Impact barriers...
...for all kinds of sensitive or costly equipment, along the building perimeter and to protect racking. - Fall protection in the form of...
...guard railing on work platforms more than 500 mm above the floor.
...guard fencing with handrails on mezzanines, walkways and work platforms that allow reaching into hazardous automated systems.
