Lifting equipment can play a pivotal role in many workplaces and in many positions. In jobs that involve manual labour, lifting goods and equipment is an everyday requirement. Using lifting equipment, even for smaller lifts, can be beneficial for workers for a number of reasons. Firstly, lifting stuff is the most common cause of all workplace injuries. For this reason alone, implementing the use of lifting equipment is beneficial for workers, in that they can avoid injury, but also for employers, because they can better manage their injury insurance. Secondly, using lifting can make lifting heavier loads easier, and require less people to contribute. A single person can quite easily move about heavy machinery or heavy goods so long as they have the right lifting equipment. This article will review exactly which pieces of lifting equipment can have the greatest impact on a workspace that is just starting to explore the subject.
The first and perhaps most important thing that you can look at purchasing are lifting slings, which are one of the most easily appliable and fundamental bits of kit you can find. These can be placed around an object of any shape or size and help people to gain a greater purchase on an object. This is important, as anybody with experience at moving objects will know that what often causes injuries is less about the weight of the item, and more about how awkward the item is to move. A bizarrely shaped object can move and behave in ways that are difficult to predict, and it is those sudden jolts under stress that can cause your body to exceed its capabilities and cause an injury. A lifting sling essentially creates a handle from which you can normalise the weight distribution of any item you’re lifting, making it a predictable process where the only thing you have to worry about is the weight. With experience, knowing how much weight you can safely lift is something that will inevitably develop.
Taking it up a notch, you have something like a winch. Winches can be used in far more situations than you might be aware of, and they have an important place in any factory. Their applications are endless, but so long as somebody has access to a winch and a place to brace it, you can pick up incredibly heavy machinery, like an engine from a vehicle, all on your own and with absolute safety. All you need to do is use a steel cable attachment to bind the item you’re lifting, and connect the cable to a winch. The winch can the be pumped in order to shorten the cable, lifting the heavy items up and do so with very little physical exertion. This makes your work more productive and safer. Taking the concept of a winch even further, you have something like an electrically operated winch, that will take the physical exertion out of the equation entirely, as well as make the process even faster.
Finally, at the upper end of the spectrum you have large lifting equipment, such as a ceiling mounted crane. These can be quite expensive installations, but their potential applications in a small factory are significant. By lifting stuff with a steel cable and a ceiling mounted crane, you can move things around the factory floor with relative ease by either moving the crane arm, or, in more expensive models, moving the entire crane along the tracks that have been installed for such a purpose. This allows businesses to cover the entire factory floor, and enables the movement of heavy components in tight spaces that vehicles can’t access.