A focus on safety

A safe and healthy working environment is a fundamental principle and right at work. The products of Blickle significantly improve safety in the workplace. They minimise the main causes of workplace accidents by making sure that loads are stable, safely moved, and fixed in place.

Every day around 4% of all employees in Germany report sick (source: German Federal Ministry of Health, BMG). This incurs gigantic costs for the economy: EUR 87.6 billion in production downtime costs (wage costs) and EUR 148.7 billion in gross value added loss in 2019 in Germany (sources: Statista, BAuA). For a company, this means that valuable employees are missing, processes are held up and the remaining employees are under more strain, thus increasing the risk of accidents and the threat of further sick leave.

Unfortunately, transport devices with excessively high starting and rolling resistance are often the cause of illness-related absences resulting from musculoskeletal disorders. Worldwide, these most frequently lead to incapacity for work, severe disability, limited ability to work and premature disability (source: BAuA – Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health). Depending on its speed, a trolley in motion can quickly become a dangerous projectile. Blickle divides the hazards which can be encountered in an intralogistics setting into three different categories, based around the different states of a transport unit: moving, braking and standstill. The wheel and castor specialist increases workplace safety in all of these situations.

Even moving a trolley involves a number of dangers. Castors with a foot guard provide protection against injuries caused by wheels or objects which are thrown up into the air. Blickle customers can use these options for a wide range of swivel and fixed castor series wählen.

In order to avoid accidents, it is also important for trolley operators to remain in control at all times while the trolley is in motion. In contrast to traditional brake systems, Blickle’s drum braked castors can reduce the speed of a trolley while it is in motion. Blickle also provides a wide range of swivel and fixed castors with a dead man's function to further increase safety. The dead man’s brake has a braking force of over 600 N. Brakes are applied in the starting position and are only released when actively operated. Electric drive systems use an electromechanical dead man’s brake for the Blickle ErgoMove series. The automatic brake system uses a hand detection sensor on the operating handles to ensure that the trolley can only be moved when the operator has both hands on the trolley. The trolley brakes when any of the handles are released. The emergency stop and anti-trap function prevent pressing and crushing injuries and complies with the most demanding safety standards.

Blickle also focuses on ensuring that loads are safe when they are at a standstill. This is done using the wide range of Blickle brake systems. These brake systems are either integrated directly into the castors as a wheel and swivel head brake or installed on the trolley as an independent unit, such as a truck lock. While similar to a traditional jack, they take the load off a transport unit without raising it up. Activating the truck lock creates a surface contact pressure of around 600 N between the trolley and the surface. This ensures that even heavy loads can be kept stable.

Blickle provides an electrically conductive version of almost every wheel and castor in its catalogue in order to provide protection against electrostatic discharge. These protect transport unit operators against painful electrostatic discharge and prevent damage to sensitive electronic goods. This also helps manufacturers of electrical and mechanical equipment to meet the European ATEX guidelines.