Inventory safety goes far beyond counting accuracy. In large warehouses and distribution centers, locating products, verifying quantities, and recording information can present significant challenges and risks, especially when inventory is stored on high-level racking systems.
In these environments, workers may need to access elevated storage locations to carry out inventory checks. This is where scissor lifts, forklifts, and other access equipment become part of the operation, introducing additional safety risks for workers.
But there is an important question to consider: Is it possible to conduct inventory counts without working at height?
With advances in automation and technologies applied to logistics, this is already a reality.
When Inventory Counting Involves Working at Height
In many distribution centers, making effective use of vertical space is essential to increasing storage capacity. Pallet racking and other storage systems can hold thousands of products across multiple levels.
During inventory counts, however, every one of these storage locations must be checked.
When workers need to be lifted to access upper storage levels, the activity may fall under applicable working-at-height safety requirements. These regulations establish preventive measures for activities involving a height difference of more than two meters where there is a risk of falling, including requirements for planning, organizing, and safely performing the work.
This means inventory operations must also be planned with worker safety in mind.
It is not just about counting inventory accurately. It is also essential to assess how the counting will be performed and which workers may be exposed to risks throughout the process.
What Are the Main Risks?
Using equipment to access elevated storage locations can involve several hazards, including workers falling, materials falling from height, and interactions between workers and equipment such as scissor lifts and forklifts.
What if this step could be eliminated altogether?
Prevention Also Means Eliminating Exposure
Traditionally, when an activity involves risk, the focus is on protecting workers from that risk.
For work at height, this means implementing protective systems, safe work procedures, appropriate equipment, training, and other preventive measures.
However, there is an even more effective strategy within the hierarchy of risk prevention: eliminating the need for exposure to the hazard whenever technically feasible.
This is precisely where technology is beginning to transform the way inventory counts are performed.
Instead of bringing workers up to the inventory, why not bring the technology to the inventory?
Drones as an Alternative for High-Level Inventory Counting
Using indoor drones for inventory counting can completely change this approach.
Instead of using a scissor lift or forklift to position a worker in front of upper-level storage locations, a drone can scan those locations from the air.
This change represents more than a technological innovation. It represents a new approach to inventory operations.
This is where Warehouse Max comes in, a Max Drone solution specifically developed for automated inventory counting in warehouses, distribution centers, industrial facilities, and logistics operations. The solution combines a purpose-built indoor drone with dedicated inventory management software.
Warehouse Max: Greater Safety for Inventory Operations
Warehouse Max aims to reduce reliance on traditional counting methods that require workers to operate at height.
The solution enables inventory counting without the need to use scissor lifts for this purpose, reducing workers’ exposure to risks associated with accessing elevated storage locations.
In this way, technology can contribute to safer operations while maintaining a focus on productivity and data reliability.
Safety and Productivity in a Single Process
Safety is one of the main benefits of this approach, but it is not the only one.
Traditional inventory counting may require large teams, access equipment, operational shutdowns or disruptions, and a significant amount of manual work.
Warehouse Max can make inventory counting up to 95% faster, while reducing operational disruption and increasing the number of storage locations scanned per hour.
This means the technology delivers benefits in two key areas:
Safety: Reduces the need to expose workers to work-at-height hazards during inventory counting.
Efficiency: Automates stages of the process and enables large numbers of storage locations to be scanned in less time.
This combination is particularly valuable for operations that need to balance inventory accuracy with business continuity.
Inventory Safety Starts Before the Count
It starts with choosing the right method, identifying potential hazards, and assessing which tasks genuinely require direct human involvement.
Ultimately, the best safety solution is not always the one that teaches workers how to deal with a hazard.
Sometimes, it is the solution that eliminates the need for them to be exposed to it in the first place.
And this may be the next step toward making inventory counting not only faster, but also safer, simpler, and more efficient.
Ready to transform inventory counting in your operation? Discover Warehouse Max.