When operating a manufacturing facility there a lot of different competing concerns that need to be addressed and considered, pulling ones attention in many different directions at once. Safety, quality, productivity, costs, and employee morale are all at the top of this list, and often times every issue facing a plant manager boils down to one of these issues. Few actions that a facility can take will impact several of these, even fewer will impact all of these considerations. One item in particular will positively impact all of these areas, and it’s one of the simplest most cost effective ways to address all of these issues. Ready for it? Good quality manufacturing lighting.
Safety is always a top concern when running a manufacturing facility. Trip and fall accidents and hand injuries are always on the top of OSHA’s list of injuries each year. There are many actions that can be taken to help alleviate these injuries but towards the top of that list is replacing old inefficient lighting with brand new, brighter, and more efficient lighting. Dimly lit walkways and aisles suddenly become well lit, allowing workers to quickly identify objects left in the walkway. Employees stop squinting at their dark work stations and instead easily see potentially hazardous objects before they place their hands near them. It sounds so simple, but simply changing the environment into a well lit area heads off a huge percent of potential accidents. You never hear about a worker tripping over a misplaced pallet because it was too easy to see.
Every production process is always striving to have a perfect quality control process, but inevitably there is always something that makes its way to the customer. Function test and spot checking catch many of these issues, but they often focus on the functioning of the product, not on how it looks. Small blemishes and scratches are often left to the human eye to identify and address. If your customer has better lighting than you, blemishes and scratches that are invisible in the shadows of your dimly lit production line are spotted a mile away when under the bright lights of brand new industrial lighting or a sunny day in the field. Don’t risk it. Install ample amounts of energy efficient lights throughout your facility and hard to see scratches, dents, and blemishes will all jump out at your employees and inspectors, minimizing the chance that they will turn up at a customer sight.
When a worker is searching through the shadows for a dropped part or to identify the part number listed on a box they are wasting valuable time they could be using to be producing product. Don’t throw this valuable time away. Ensure that there is more than enough light on your production line and in your warehouse so that your hard working employees are focused on their jobs, and not on trying to read a label in the dark.
This speaks to the morale of your workforce as well. If they are constantly squinting to do their jobs or walking into work in a dark dimly lit facility, it brings their morale down. Brighten up their workspaces with brand new bright energy efficient lighting and suddenly walking into work isn’t depressing. Good quality lighting boosts the morale, and subsequently the productivity of every employee on your manufacturing floor.
Many older manufacturing facilities have old outdated lighting. Its easy to just keep using these old lights and not realize how much they are costing you. New energy efficient lighting often times saves so much on energy costs that they quickly pay for themselves in lower utility bills. This is even more true if you can utilize power company incentives or if your facility is charged rate based on peak load. This speeds up the already short payback period. These cost savings are even higher when think of all of the additional gains listed above simply by replacing your old existing lighting with new energy efficient lighting.
When you consider all of the benefits of updating your manufacturing lighting, it’s hard to think of a single investment that you could make that would impact as many aspects of your business as energy efficient lighting. If you are interested in seeing how our lighting can impact you please contact us.