PEER Bearing, a manufacturer of bearings for many industries including, agriculture, industrial transmission and material handling, is enhancing its safety efforts with the help of Crown Equipment, one of the world’s largest material handling companies. Through working with Crown Equipment, PEER Bearing is now able to leverage operational data from its forklift fleet and reinforce safe operating practices throughout its 200,000-square-foot distribution center.
With safety being a cornerstone of its company culture, PEER Bearing’s warehouse personnel regularly consider new tools that can help reinforce positive behavior. As a result, they selected Crown Equipment’s InfoLink fleet and operator management system to effectively capture and package operational data so they could make informed decisions that would improve safety. Today, InfoLink provides PEER Bearing with impact detection to help change operator mindsets and make safety a priority in their day-to-day operations. Additionally, the system’s electronic pre-shift inspections help ensure every forklift is safe to operate and the company’s inspection system is OSHA compliant.
“InfoLink is a great addition to our fleet. Our operators have become more aware, as to safety and the operation of the trucks. The impact detection feature is certainly a great deterrent to preventing those behaviors that would cause operators to get into accidents,” said Leo Linval, assembly and repack supervisor for PEER Bearing. “InfoLink has definitely contributed to the safety in our operation by being another set of eyes out on the floor when supervisors obviously can’t be everywhere at once.”
PEER Bearing’s distribution center, part of the company’s North American headquarters facility in Waukegan, Illinois, handles bearings manufactured throughout the company’s global network of facilities. It receives approximately 100 pallets of material each day while also processing a variety of outbound orders ranging from single packages to full pallets. PEER Bearing’s forklift fleet at the facility includes a variety of Crown order pickers, reach trucks, stand up counterbalance trucks and very narrow aisle turret trucks among others.
In addition to PEER Bearing’s successful implementation of InfoLink and its fleet of Crown trucks, Linval also attended a two-day Crown Equipment Demonstrated Performance TrainSafe Train-the-Trainer course where he developed the skills and tools necessary to efficiently train his colleagues regarding truck features and safe operation.
“It gave me a lot of insight into the safety and the OHSA standards that go into the overall safety of our operations,” said Linvall. “I have a plethora of tools at my disposal that I can use to correct bad behaviors and to help drivers improve on current behaviors that they may have.”