Jungheinrich Nominated For 2016 BITA Design4Safety Awards

The British Industrial Truck Association (BITA) have recognised Jungheinrich’s ongoing commitment to creating the safest workplace environments by shortlisting the company for an award in the Industrial Vehicles category of this year’s prestigious Design4Safety competition.

The Design4Safety judges nominated Jungheinrich’s new, fully-integrated pedestrian detection and speed control system which has been designed to significantly reduce the risk of a forklift hitting workers but, importantly, does not compromise a truck’s operational productivity.

The solution, developed by Jungheinrich in partnership with Arcure, is based around the Blaxtair intelligent on-board camera that continuously scans for potential obstacles in a truck’s path.

In operation, when an obstacle is detected, the system delivers audible and visual alerts for the driver while automatically slowing the truck to ‘crawl’ speed.

At long distances the system is configured to respond to obstacles identified as pedestrians. When something is detected at close quarters, the system will respond to various types of obstructions, so pedestrians and, for example, racking or even the building’s structure will trigger the alarms and reduce the truck’s speed.

This means that with Jungheinrich’s system, pedestrian safety is improved within the warehouse but throughput and operational efficiency are not compromised because the operator does not need to respond to frequent unnecessary warnings as he goes about his routine.

The Design4Safety awards are organised by BITA and aim to highlight the importance of product design in improving safety standards. They are open to all companies exhibiting at the forthcoming IMHX 2016 (NEC, Birmingham, 13-16 September).

Jan Lorenz, managing director of Jungheinrich UK Ltd, commented: “By focusing on the role of design in creating safer working practices these awards recognise innovative thinking that results in a measurable contribution to safety awareness and incident reduction. Safety has always been a key driver for Jungheinrich’s product design teams and our nomination is a clear recognition of this.”

In all, there are six categories in the Design4Safety Awards and the overall winner of each will be announced at a ceremony on Thursday 15th September.