Make the connection between planes, trains and forklifts

If anything good is coming out of the tough economic times we’re living through, it’s that logistics people are starting to think more strategically than reactively. Better late than never. Unfortunately, reactive thinking is still at play in helping us learn the lessons behind the tough times plaguing our transportation infrastructure.

Just the other day we read about the commuter train crash in Washington, DC that killed nine people and injured scores. Early findings are that the Metro system routinely delayed system upgrades that could have resulted in a far less ugly outcome. Who knows, maybe there are operator training implications as well.

A few weeks before that we heard about the Airbus plane that went missing over the Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, France. The aircraft reportedly went through a thunderstorm with strong turbulence. An automated message was received indicating a failure of the electrical system. Was it pilot error for flying through this weather in the first place? Did the electrical system failure mislead the pilots? Was the failure due to faulty equipment maintenance?

These questions are part of the reactive thinking process transportation authorities are going through now to make sense of and learn from these tragedies.

There are plenty of lift truck accidents that never make the headlines but have consequences as tragic as the above. Many of these accidents have similar causation to the stories that made the headlines: Poor training, poor equipment maintenance, poor communication. Smart managers see the parallels between these local and international tragedies. Not only do they want to avoid the death of valuable employees, but of their very livelihood as well.

These managers are under pressure to show results. Where material handling is concerned, that means moving product out of their space and into a truck as fast as possible. That’s “link” thinking not supply chain thinking, to paraphrase my friend Jim Tompkins, president of Tompkins Associates. Just as smart managers are inspired by those tragic headlines to rethink the processes surrounding their lift truck fleets, they’re also inspired by the tough economic headlines to rethink how those fleets are operated. They know the supply chain forces connected to their link in the supply chain.

They know what has to happen at their customer’s loading docks as well as their own to keep shipments moving. The lift truck operators know how these loads behave, they know how their lift trucks behave and THEY know how to behave to stay safe while ensuring swift, sure supply chain flow .

Lift truck fleet managers and operators need to connect the dots between themselves and the world outside their box. The best ones know that a newspaper can be a great training manual. 

Tom Andel
tandel4315@aol.com