Reducing Hazardous Heat In The Warehouse

Are there dangerous hot spots in your warehouse?

A warehouse can be hot in the summertime. That heat can create a hazardous environment to work in and workers cannot perform their tasks safely when suffering from heat-related illnesses. Occupational heat exposure is a probability at this time of year but careful warehouse management procedures can lessen the impact the weather makes on your team.

There is a lot of material available regarding the reduction of heat-related incidents on the job but a quick overview would look like this:

• Allow access to water and insist on hydration/cooling break
•  Alter schedules in times of extreme heat weather emergencies
• Incorporate training that informs all workers about the effects of heat stress, how to recognize it, and what to do about it
• Provide safety stations equipped to treat heat-related illness immediately
• Identify health conditions aggravated by extreme heat and provide cooler alternatives
• Acclimate employees returning to work after three or more days absence
• Change the warehouse layout for better airflow and evaluate mechanical cooling methods

Each one of these strategies integrates with the others to create a practical template for managing periods of unusually high temperatures without loss. Some of the strategies, like warehouse layout, are made simpler with the use of ChainDrive’s Warehouse Management component.

Warehouse Management Plan For Temperature In Warehouse Layout

With ChainDrive Warehouse layout management you can configure your dedicated space and view pivot table graphical representations of your layout. This makes it easier to identify the factors that create temperature variations. Look for closely packed heat-producing equipment, dead-end spots, lack of insulation, etc. In normal temperatures, roof vents will take advantage of hot air rising and theoretically let heat out the top while cooler air is pulled into the ground level. In practice, gravity ventilation doesn’t reach all the hot spots inside. When it is extremely hot, bringing hot air in exacerbates the situation.

Fans are standard equipment but they need to be strategically placed. Since warehouses are high spaces, the air inside tends to form layers that create barriers to movement between them. Break up those layers with high-volume, low-speed fans. These fans move a column of air to the floor where it is forced to move across the floor to the walls and rise to the ceiling to be blown to the floor again. This movement mixes the heat layers and improves air quality along with regulation of temperature if the warehouse is laid out correctly.

Use ChainDrive’s Warehouse layout tool to reduce the heat hazards in your warehouse.