Heineken Uses A-SAFE to Segregate Forklifts from Personnel

13 Jul 2016

The Heineken Brewery in Zoeterwoude, Netherlands has reduced risks to people and machines in the workplace to an absolute minimum by implementing polymer safety barriers. From now on, personnel in forklifts are clearly segregated from pedestrians and move along different paths. And when it comes to any unexpected collisions, the polymer barriers will absorb the impacts and reform to their original states

Peter Everts, communications manager at the Heineken, Zoeterwoude site, showed me the highlights of the production site, where even a short guided tour through the largest brewery in Europe takes up to an hour. There is an endless series of crates and casks and, most of all, beer bottles moving through the packaging halls towards a container, ready to be transported on a truck, and later on to a ship, to go anywhere in the world.

Everywhere in this mostly automated workplace I see signage and posters informing the personnel on the safety rules in the workplace. For example, there is a big banner with a photo of one of the workers, with the quote: "Stay sharp on recognising unsafe situations."

Peter Everts says: "It's all part of our campaign Safety First. On a regular basis we hang new banners with a portrait and a personal safety message from one of our work colleagues, in combination with an interview about it on our intranet. This makes it personal and has proved to work very well in getting the safety message across."

Safe Traffic

Heineken takes safety in their working environment very seriously, and preventing accidents have a high priority in the logistics part of the site. I talked about this with Jacco Schreuder – as Team Leader in Customer Service & Logistics he is responsible for the logistics operation on site. Next to him is installation leader Marco Vermeulen of the facilities department.

In their job they are consistently dealing with safety improvement. One of the many projects that Schreuder and Vermeulen employed last year included improving the overall safety of the warehouse.

Schreuder said: "It all started when I was over at our colleagues in the UK. They had a brewery full of polymer barriers to protect their employees and also to prevent prevent damaging their forklifts. It looked really great, so we thought we should immediately look to see if such a solution was possible for us.”

Until that time Heineken, Zoeterwoude had used metal fences, steel constructions and floor lines for segregation and protection, but Schreuder explains why this is not a perfect solution: "Metal does not absorb impact, so when you hit such a fence you got a lot of damage on your forklift or somebody gets hurt.”

Eye-Opener

As the diversity of products increases on the site, so the complexity of production at the site gets bigger. The market constantly asks for more and more product diversity, so future operations are likely to be ever more complicated. High-tech machinery in the brewery is able to produce multiple products at a very high speed.

Schreuder says: "Because of the numerous activities inside the brewery the working space gets smaller. There’s less space for the forklift drivers to operate, which makes it harder to drive without causing damage. The products all have their own codes and their own place in the warehouse, so the more products we get, the higher the variation in the storage."

Choosing new barriers is motivated by the consistent will to improve the safety and to reduce the costs of damage.

Schreuder says: "If you drive into a steel construction, you'll not only damage your forklift, you'll also have to replace the barrier. We were busy designing a program to take better care of our forklifts by introducing ownership. The idea is the driver is responsible for the vehicle he's driving – this helps to reduce costs. This means that a vehicle gets well maintained and is used with care. Via audits we keep scores, so we can reward the best driver every quarter of the year. This way we make it a fun competition, this was really appreciated and produced really good results.”

Everts continues: "The kick-off of this project was a video where the cost price of a forklift was compared to the costs of a Mercedes E-Class at 60.000 Euros. With such a car you'd be very careful, so this means the same should apply to a forklift. Especially when these cost twice the price of a Mercedes E-Class. The video was a real eye-opener."

Resilience

The Heineken employees involved with the ownership project had already remarked that the metal barriers led to too much damage on the forklifts, says Schreuder.

Vermeulen adds: "The damage was, of course, not the only reason to turn the existing situation around. It's all about pedestrian safety. In the part of the site where unmanned automated forklifts are driving, we created a path where pedestrians can now walk in extra safety. This path is fully shielded by A-SAFE barriers."

The forklifts are unmanned but this part of the site is not. Schreuder explains: "Operators walk in there on a regular basis. In the middle of the room is a working place and they should be able to reach it safely. The production is too complicated and too variated to be run entirely unmanned.

With the implementation of A-SAFE barriers the risks from damage were enormously reduced. The polymer barriers have an in-built flexibility and can barely be broken.

Vermeulen said: “The pedestrians are now completely segregated from the working area, but even where a pedestrian could potentially be hit by a forklift truck, the A-SAFE barrier will absorb the impact. Hereby, the chance of injuries gets a lot smaller. The A-SAFE barrier absorbs the impact. So you can drive in to it with a forklift and both will be unharmed.” Additional Work A-SAFE’s safety solutions had already been successfully implanted by the Heineken Netherlands’s English colleagues. Nevertheless, Vermeulen and Schreuder were better safe than sorry, so they went on a search for alternative systems.

Vermeulen said: “We could not find a manufacturer which offers such a product in the Netherlands and A-SAFE is manufactured in the UK, so this had the disadvantage of a long delivery time.”

In comment A-SAFE indicated that the delivery time had been reduced thanks to the streamlining of the entire production process.

The time of implementation was short, says Vermeulen: "Each department has its own budget and does something about safety. We received a request from CS&E to place the barriers. Together with Jacco we decided where the barriers should be placed. Within a week they were there. We have not been out of production, because the great thing about programmable forklifts is that you can make sure they do not just come into random parts of the workplace. The warehouse management system will ensure they will be blocked."

In the production area itself A-SAFE barriers immediately stand out, thanks to their bright yellow colour and the polymer construction makes a strong impression. The horizontal tubes are made from a unique blend of polyolefins which makes the whole both flexible and strong. When there’s an impact, the couplings move with it while the rails deform. After the impact, the barrier will snap back to its original shape, which makes the material durable. The material can be used in many ways and there are hardly any maintenance costs.