Making Safety Visible with Training Simulation
Being safe: no accidents, no damaged equipment, no personal injury (or worse).
That’s why a good lift truck operator is always, first and foremost, a safe lift truck operator. And that’s why the right kind of training simulation places a special emphasis on learning-to-be-safe. But what does that mean?
Well, everyone learns everything by making mistakes. Of course, in the real world, mistakes have real world consequences and that’s how equipment is damaged, and people are injured (or worse).
Fortunately, in a simulated world, mistakes will only have simulated consequences. And so learning-to-be-safe means training simulation that makes those mistakes, and their simulated consequences, “visible” to the trainee. How can we do that?
Learning to be Safe, with Training Simulation
A big part of learning to operate lift trucks safely means learning to judge distances carefully.
As one example, consider a stand up counterbalanced lift truck (“dock stocker”) colliding with a rack as it backs up in a narrow aisle. In the real world, such a collision, repeated many times, would eventually lead to rack failure.
But when this happens in the simulated world, the simulation software would “play” a collision sound and, of course, stop the backing up motion. It would also count the number of collisions.
But better still is to make collisions visible, and that’s what Simlog has just introduced with our Stand Up Counterbalanced Lift Truck simulation software.
Thanks to this unique functionality, you can now see where the collisions occurred, as shown in the screen capture image that accompanies this blog post: there is one red collision marker on the lift truck (at the point of contact), and another red collision marker on the rack (at the point of contact).
Even better, when the trial (exercise) ends, Simlog’s simulation software will present all the collisions that occurred in this same way, with “paired” red collision markers, to “remind” the trainee about what happened (and what shouldn’t happen again).
In this way, new operators “naturally” learn to work carefully, so slowly. Later, after enough “drill and practice”, they pick up speed, while still working carefully. Finally, when they can consistently complete simulation exercises with no collision markers (so no collisions), that’s making safety visible with training simulation.
“Saving” Real World Costs
In the real world, such a “bump” would mean
- taking the lift truck out of service (productivity loss)
- conducting an investigation
- repairing the damage to the rack and the lift truck
- re-certifying your lift truck operator.
That’s thousands of dollars “needlessly” spent, even before these additional direct and indirect “costs”, according to one industry expert (and Simlog customer):
- lowered morale among your staff (especially the lift truck operators)
- more frequent OSHA visits
- customer concerns about what they are buying (possible merchandise loss)
- damage to your reputation in the community
That’s why learning-to-be-safe is so important!
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