In the U.S. alone, an estimated 11% of total accidents are forklift accidents, including 85 fatal accidents, 34,900 accidents resulting in serious injury, and 61,800 accidents considered non-serious every year. Since a forklift is used for an average of 8 years and there are an estimated 1.5 million forklift operators working in the U.S., that means 9 in 10 forklifts will be involved in some type of accident. And this doesn’t count unreported accidents, which depending on the site can be numerous.
Safety incidents are costly for manufacturing, fulfillment, and distribution facility operators. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that forklift-related injuries lead to an average of 13 days away from work, 63% more than for other types of job-related injuries. And there are other direct and indirect costs of safety incidents, such as fines and additional training needs.
Because of the importance of safety and the costs of unsafe processes, a major electronics retailer sought to replace battery swapping, which it had identified as a key risk. Battery swapping rooms, also called exchange rooms, contain a stockpile of forklift batteries that technicians keep fully charged. Also set up in this room are chargers that charge the depleted forklift batteries once they've been removed from the forklifts using them.
The retailer had used battery swapping since switching to electric forklifts, because it had seemed like the most efficient way to keep vehicles charged. But battery swapping was problematic. In addition to creating safety risks from battery drops, pinches, and battery acid spills, battery swapping had caused the retailer to double the batteries it had and led to significantly higher infrastructure costs. To keep up with e-commerce demand during the pandemic, the retailer had also ordered more batteries, many of which it hadn’t ended up needing. Most had been sitting on pallets for almost two years.
The retailer estimated that at one of its primary midwest distribution centers, it had a million dollars of capital equipment it wasn’t using or could eliminate with a more efficient charging process. This included extra batteries and chargers. In addition, it was spending an estimated $110k every year on charging labor and maintenance. And these costs didn’t even include the lost productivity and additional expenses from safety incidents. The retailer was already leveraging automation for other fulfillment workflows, but had never thought automated charging could be the solution to its problems with battery swapping. That is, until it met Resonant Link.
Read the full case study to learn what happened next, including how much initial estimates showed the company could save simply by creating a safer work environment with automated wireless charging.
