Maintaining proper warehouse services is essential for ensuring a consistent, high level of productivity and efficiency throughout your daily operations. Due to their heavy reliance in a warehouse, forklift maintenance is an obvious priority—but while forklift battery maintenance is often overlooked, it’s just as important. After all, what good is a forklift if its battery is faulty?
For this reason, warehouse maintenance managers and forklift operators both need to frequently examine their forklift batteries to ensure they are operating at maximum capacity and safety. In the following sections, we’ll take a look at some of the main benefits of making a forklift battery maintenance program a staple in your warehouse.
3 Major Benefits of a Forklift Battery Maintenance Program
1. Optimize Productivity
Forklifts are an essential asset for a productive and efficient warehouse. Running a distribution center or warehouse can be a massive undertaking. Besides potentially moving large quantities of heavy inventory, there is always the pressure to keep up with your downstream customer’s ever-increasing demands. Keeping up with these demands involves relying on motive power equipment to move the inventory your customers are paying for, and forklift batteries power that high-value equipment.
Without forklifts to move your inventory around your warehouse and onto trucks, how would you ever deliver your products to your customers on time? Since industrial batteries are the power behind the motive power equipment that drives your revenue, ensuring they are always operating at maximum capacity is a key component of a successful warehouse. Without fully functional forklift batteries, you can’t move the products that are driving your revenue, which can be a big hit to your bottom line. Additionally, when your employees are trying to use forklifts that aren’t fully functional, it slows down productivity, reducing profitability even further.
2. Realize Long-term Cost Benefits
Forklift batteries can be a big up-front investment for warehouses and distribution centers, especially for those with very large fleets of motive power equipment. Since purchasing new motive power equipment and forklift batteries can take up a lot of your budget allocation, you want to make sure you’re getting the best ROI from your purchases.
Taking care of your batteries by extending battery life should be one of your top priorities because it helps you ensure they will continue operating at maximum capacity long-term. By performing regular maintenance surveys, you can determine the condition of your batteries. For example, worn out batteries may not supply a sufficient charge to power the forklifts, resulting in an unstable electrical output. This can even cause serious damage to your motive power equipment, resulting in lost revenue. Periodically testing your forklift batteries will also determine if there are any potential problems before a premature electrical component failure occurs. Additionally, installing a battery status system to manage forklift batteries collects battery data helps to extend battery life and maximize the battery’s run time, further contributing to long-term cost benefits.
3. Improve Employee Safety
Faulty forklift batteries can be a potential safety hazard and can place your employees at risk for injury. When a battery needs to be replaced or is damaged, there is the potential for it to leak acid on the exterior of the battery. Battery acid can pose a health hazard for employees attempting to handle the damaged batteries. Anyone inspecting the batteries should wear protective gear to avoid injury. If an industrial battery is overfilled or incorrectly charged, there is also the risk of an electrolytic fluid spill which could result in serious burns.
Additionally, employees can be injured when forklifts are not working properly due to malfunctioning batteries. When warehouse staff are concerned about operational problems due to faulty batteries, your business productivity will suffer since employees will work at a slower pace to ensure their own safety. If an employee is injured by faulty batteries, you’ll have to pay higher worker’s compensation premiums, legal fees, insurance expenses, and account for the lost productivity due to fewer employees being available to work because people are out injured.
By following an organized maintenance program, you can utilize your forklift batteries to their greatest potential in order to optimize productivity, ensure employee safety, and get the highest return on your investment.
Interested in battery maintenance? Download the full ebook to learn more about how a forklift battery maintenance program can benefit your warehouse.
