The key to improving safety

John Kent explains how access management systems
are helping to reduce accidents in the warehouse by
enabling close control of key and equipment usage

Today’s warehouse environment is
a busy place – with staff often
required to do a variety of
different jobs and operate many types of
dangerous machinery such as forklifts,
cranes, delivery vehicles and
compactors. Each member of staff is
vital in ensuring the warehouse itself
functions effectively.

It is required that staff receive thorough
training and qualification wherever
necessary and that all records of
maintenance checks and repairs are kept
up to date, as this type of equipment can
be very dangerous if staff are not
sufficiently qualified to operate it. Yet
with the large number of staff employed
at a warehouse, using different machines
daily, it is very difficult to ensure that
only the right staff have access to the
right equipment – and accidents can arise
from staff handling kit they are not
officially trained to use.

Out with the old With the proliferation of machines that
require special training and
qualifications within a single working
environment, health and safety becomes
a major concern in the manufacturing,
retail and distribution industry. This
compromise to health and safety occurs
when assessing authorisation and
permission levels because a manual
process is not suitable to track this
information accurately.

Many warehouses store keys for
vehicles and tool storage units in a basic
key box, with keys audited using a paper
log book. In most cases, this relies too
heavily on the diligence of the employees
or management staff. With the onus on
the staff, keys are taken without being
documented and often are not returned
on time. If equipment or a vehicle is
needed by another member of staff, time
is wasted searching for keys and it
compromises the regular maintenance
checks done on the vehicles. And if an
accident does occur, it is extremely
difficult to trace why and how the user
gained access to the keys needed to start
that piece of equipment.

Modernising a manual process
In order to address this issue, warehouses
need to improve access control. There is
an increasing need for warehouses to
adopt access management systems that
automate the process of dispensing and
managing keys based on employee access
rights. A system like this can improve
security and safety significantly from day
one, as well as boosting efficiency in the
warehouse by enabling close control of
key and equipment usage.

Fundamentally, access management
systems enable self-vending of keys in a
safe, authorised and audited manner
without constant management
involvement – resulting in short ROI
timescales. Staff can identify themselves at
an automated key cabinet, rather than
asking managers for permission, and can
only access keys for vehicles and
equipment they are authorised to use. The
information is stored on a central
database and uses staff profiles containing
personal certification information to track
individual training levels and ensure only
authorised employees can physically
remove keys from the cabinet.

Managing access to keys also enables
detailed auditing to occur. All information
is available via the cabinet’s data display or
on an administrator’s PC which means the
operator can produce a report for each
key showing when it has been used, by
whom, and when it was returned. A
further benefit is that user profiles can be
automatically updated to the system
containing training details for all staff.

This will alert managers when machine
licences need to be renewed and staffretrained.

This will avoid all timeconsuming
manual tracking of staff
qualifications, as well as ensuring the
safety of all staff using the equipment and
those around them.

It is this kind of auditing and
controlled management that will alleviate
some of the pressure put on staff to keep
vehicles and devices secure and used
efficiently. Detailed auditing makes each
member of staff accountable for the
vehicles or equipment they have taken as
any damage caused can easily be traced.

This level of responsibility encourages
employees to take greater care of
machinery, saving warehouses money in
the long run.

Ultimately, key and access management
should be a simple process and should not
add to the stress of warehouse
management. However many
organisations still adopt a manual and
time consuming method of managing
keys with paper-based processes which
themselves are easily mislaid. In order to
be as efficient, cost effective and of course
secure as possible, this needs to change.

An automated approach takes the pressure
off managers because they can be
confident that keys, and the equipment
those keys activate, are managed
automatically.

John Kent is president of Traka