According to a recent MH&L Reader Quick Poll, to many of you, LEED certification isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Some think it’s a scam to make the lefties in the “Green Conspiracy” a little greener—financially, that is. Another sizable number of you don’t even know what LEED is. Then there are those of you who’ve spent a considerable sum to get this piece of paper, to either please or win green-conscious customers or to live up to your own company’s commitment to environmental sustainability.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and it’s a program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to “provide building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.”

In other words, it’s meant to prove your operations aren’t damaging or wasting our natural resources. Earning this piece of paper costs quite a bit of money

I’ve seen estimates that getting LEED certified can cost anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5 percent of a construction project. Only a few years ago it was thought that this was only suitable for office buildings, but now big companies like Kraft in the food and beverage world and McKesson in pharmaceuticals are certifying their distribution centers too.

However, some big companies with a pedigree in environmental sustainability, while certifying their office buildings and retail outlets, choose not to LEED-certify their DCs. For example, IKEA, the home furnishings retailer, has LEED certified stores in key markets—not only to make an environmental difference, but to make a difference with customers as well.

I talked with IKEA’s community relations manager when I learned about their use of “BigAss fans” to help make better use of their heating and cooling spend in their warehouses. They also use these fans to make customers in their self-serve warehouses more comfortable. Ms. Minister says IKEA customers expect these stores to be run sustainably.

“The customers in Portland want to know they’re shopping somewhere these things are thought of,” she told me. “That’s why one of the things IKEA has been doing for a long time is flat packing our furniture. We can get more in shipments and that cuts down on the shipments themselves. We have fewer shipments because of that and that saves on CO2 emissions. Since we opened (in Portland) we’ve been able to increase our use of green energy in the store by 42%. We’re constantly working to get that number higher. We buy at the platinum level green energy through our local power provider and with conservation we get that number higher. The fans help.”

One thing to note, however, is while IKEA is pursuing LEED certification for its stores, it’s not doing so for its DCs. Why not? Here’s what IKEA’s public affairs officer, Joseph Roth, told me when I asked him:

“While we strive to implement as many sustainable building practices (physically and operationally) into our distribution centers, there are more and varied opportunities to receive LEED points (and thus certification) with stores/offices than warehouses where there is a more straightforward construction process. IKEA has its own standards and has chosen to pursue and receive LEED certification only for a store in a each region of the country, and its North American service office.”

An argument for LEED certification could be made by saying that big supply chain partners may want to see documentation of what you’re doing to support their sustainability initiatives. They may not say you need to get LEED certified, but they may still want some kind of proof of your sustainability initiatives.

Thomas Taylor, general manager and founder of Vertegy, a sustainability consulting firm that has helped 28 buildings earn LEED certification since it was founded six years ago, described this certification as a kind of shorthand way to answer all those questions. In fact he had to convince Anheuser Bush that LEED certification was right for them.

“We said one of the reasons could be you have share holders and they want to know that when you spend their money you’re doing it prudently and you can do all these things that are defined in the LEED rating system,” Taylor said. “But do you really want to take the time in a corporate report to explain all that or do you just want to say ‘We do a good job from a sustainability aspect and our building was vetted by the U.S. Green Building Council and we received a rating of X.’? For some people that’s a legitimate reason to say let’s do this.”

Others, like IKEA, choose the document-it-yourself approach. Either way, Taylor cites a McGraw Hill whitepaper that reports the results of a five-year study looking at the growth of Fortune 500 companies that have created an officer rank in their corporate structure that was either Chief Sustainability officer or compliance officer. Their conclusion was it will be more and more important for these companies to know the sustainability efforts of upstream and downstream supply chain partners.

The reason there haven’t been many LEED certified DCs in the past is that material handling hasn’t been addressed. That’s changing, according to Taylor, because the current version of the program considers energy efficiency measures as well as air quality issues—as addressed by the afore-mentioned ceiling fans. Now certification takes into account the energy consumed by conveyors, stacker cranes, fans—anything that draws juice while supporting your handling operations.

Whether you’ve been blissfully ignorant of LEED or just ignoring it, it’s going to be harder to do either of those as more and more of your supply chain partners and competitors look at LEED—and possibly take it.

It must have been a slow news day at the Wall Street Journal, as its weekend edition finally got around to reporting on a story that we in the material handling world have been talking about for a couple years: the ongoing, often rancorous, debate between the wood pallet and the plastic pallet manufacturers.

The WSJ gave it front-page coverage, albeit coverage in the traditional “offbeat” slot that earlier in the week were devoted to such quirky topics as a convention of people named Phil Campbell, endangered French hamsters and a Czech cartoon character stowing away on a space shuttle. So the pallet controversy didn’t exactly nudge aside the various Middle East crises and the Japanese nuclear disaster for Page 1 coverage. Still, it’s nice to see the business press paying attention to material handling, particularly during ProMat week.

Although the WSJ story begins with an account of the “butter battle” that has led to a lawsuit (a story we first reported back in December 2010), the main point of the article (besides working the word “unpalatable” into an outrageous pun) is the finger-pointing between the wood and plastic camps. The story zeroes in on two of the more vociferous combatants, two men whom we have quoted numerous times in the past: Bob Moore of iGPS (plastic) and Bruce Scholnick of the National Wooden Pallet & Container Association (wood).

While the WSJ does a good job outlining the basics of the butter contamination contretemps, it misses the mark by failing to cite a previous, equally contentious dustup centering on the Johnson & Johnson Tylenol, which initially (and erroneously) was blamed on wooden pallets, which led to some insinuations among the plastic pallet camp that maybe the FDA ought to regulate the wooden pallet manufacturers. So the butter battle is just the latest in a series of PR skirmishes between the two sides.

One issue the WSJ raises, though it doesn’t really dwell on it, is the idea that if both sides of the pallet wars are right, then consumers are in big-time trouble because that would mean wood and plastic are both rife with problems. The article quotes Virginia Tech’s Ralph Rupert, who neatly summarizes the situation: “I think both sides get hurt” from the dispute.

As mentioned in my last blog post, there were plenty of joint-venture and cooperation announcements from exhibitors at ProMat. A couple of them involved lift truck manufacturers and automation providers. Dematic is working with Crown to provide an automated order picker, and Egemin Automation Inc. announced that Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift America Inc. (MCFA), is now the primary component supplier for Egemin’s Hybrid Automated Guide Vehicle (AGV). It’s obvious that automation vendors are giving as much attention to their own supply chains as they are to those of their clients. In fact, the disastrous situation in Japan was a popular topic of conversation at ProMat, considering the potential supply chain disruptions it could cause.

For example, Daifuku Webb made it clear in its press announcements that its manufacturing facilities and most of its suppliers are located in areas of Japan that were free from damage, leaving its inbound supply chain intact. Its manufacturing operations continue and are not in areas where there are planned blackouts.

I had dinner with Toyota Material Handling USA’s President Brett Wood Wednesday night and he told me pretty much the same thing—that Toyota’s locations and people in Japan were okay and operational. He did add that it’s a bit early to predict the supply chain implications of the earthquake and tsunami. Based on conversations he’s had with colleagues in the industrial truck industry, lift truck manufacturers may eventually have trouble getting some precision components like brakes—which are commonly sourced from Japan.

Quality components are an important topic to Brett, as they are to his industry, and he told me that he’s so concerned about the prospect of customers sourcing cheap, non-certified parts that his company is doubling the warranty period on Toyota replacement parts from six months to a year. Although he didn’t tie this to the situation in Japan, it sends an important message: paying attention to the small stuff will help you avoid problems with the big stuff.

That theme stuck with me as I walked the ProMat floor on the last day of the show. While the automation on hand was prominently displayed, those who patrolled the aisles looking for news about material handling infrastructure weren’t disappointed. In fact the situation in Japan came up even among those distributors. For example, companies in the U.S. are just as vulnerable to earthquakes as their Japanese counterparts. The folks at the Cubic Designs booth told me companies need to pay more attention to the integrity of their mezzanines, particularly where supports meet concrete. They pointed out there are seismic zones throughout the U.S. but no national safety standard concerning mezzanines, and safety regulations vary from state to state. That’s why the kind of safety certification vendors like Cubic Designs offer is so important. Mezzanine rarely gets the kind of safety scrutiny from users as their buildings do.

Mezzanines and racks are equally vulnerable to impacts from lift trucks. Robert Brooker, co-president of Damotech, told me that where racks are concerned, standards mostly deal with out-of-plumb or out-of-straight conditions. Impacts and dents are often ignored by users, but each ding further degrades structural stability. And if the user hires welders to make repairs, that can further degrade tensile strength. It’s typically not effectively dealt with until after there’s a complete structural failure, Brooker said.

Even conveyor is vulnerable to structural damage, and DeWayne Nelson at the Wasp, Inc. booth talked about the difference welded conveyor frames can make in areas of a facility where lift trucks bump into them or where the forces of over-capacity loads exact their toll. He’s trying to get market traction with the idea of replacing bolted-together conveyor sections used in such high-risk portions of a workplace with welded segments of conveyor.

This year’s ProMat reminded me why I love covering material handling so much. The solutions may vary in sophistication from hardware to software, but all of them are equally important to the structural integrity of all businesses.

Most of the managers in the material handling and logistics field are a part of what I call Generation O (for “old”), based on the responses to our recent 2011 Salary Survey. Well over half — in fact, 61% — of the respondents are at least 50 years old. And not too surprisingly, when asked what is the biggest challenge facing the industry today, a frequently heard response was: “developing Generation X and Generation Y employees into managers.”

“The oldest baby boomers are retiring now, and the industry’s near-future U.S.-born talent pool is shrinking at an alarming rate,” says Dan Boos, principal of Boos Consulting Services, who led a half-day seminar on “The People Side of the Supply Chain” at this week’s ProMat show in Chicago. “As a result, the talent pool will by necessity have to become more diverse.”

One of the issues is that the best talent among the Gen X’s and Gen Y’s are proving to be highly selective of where they want to be employed. As U.S. manufacturing companies have learned in recent years it’s no longer enough to simply hang a “Help Wanted” sign out in front of your building, even during a recession. Companies today are looking more and more toward employing a multi-cultural and multi-national workforce to keep their operations going. And that’s led to the rise in diversity programs.

These diversity programs, Boos says, enhance a company’s position for hiring top talent as an “employer of choice.” It also provides additional opportunities to develop strategic partnership with customers and suppliers.

Boos lays out a basic outline for material handling and logistics managers to establish an engage workforce diversity within their operations:

● recognize the value of diversity

● dedicate trained management resources

● create a workforce diversity plan

● align the plan with performance management

● implement the plan with effective sponsorship

● measure the plan’s effectiveness

● continuous annual improvement

● determine the plan’s return on investment.

Not only will such a plan help you recruit talent, but it will help you keep them, too. Boos cites research that indicates nearly 70% of all those currently employed expect to change employers within the next two years. When you calculate the cost to train your employees, and then factor in the possibility that seven out of every 10 of your new hires may be leaving you shortly after they’ve become productive and potentially promotable, you can see why it’s absolutely vital to ensure you have access to a diverse workforce.

In my next post, we’ll look at some forward-looking educational programs aiming to develop top material handling and logistics talent at a remarkably young age.

After a full day of face-to-face interviews and press conferences at ProMat, a clear theme is emerging: We need to find ways to stay lean and agile while building contingency plans to deal with uncertainty. It’s almost like everyone is saying “store up on strategies to reduce storage—but never run out of what your customer wants.” Sure. That’s easy to say, but in a global supply chain, how do you make sure everyone in your network is on the same page?

Even Tom Ridge, former secretary of Homeland Security and ProMat’s keynote speaker, said that while globalization exposes us to greater vulnerability, we have to manage disruptions before they manage us. That means managing partners as well as inventory, making sure they’re complying with regulations so once their shipments cross the border there is no disruption. When you’re talking about Just In Time, that can be a real problem. Ridge touted the Bush Administration’s “Smart Border Agreement” and the “25% Challenge,” reducing the automotive industry’s wait time at the Ontario/Detroit border by reengineering the clearance process . Ridge said this was a great example of government cooperation with the private sector to dramatically cut wait times by as much as 80%.

But if you rely on government to be efficient, that’s like asking for diet advice from an 800 pound gorilla. That’s me talking, not Ridge. Walking the floor at ProMat, it’s clear material handling and logistics solution providers are helping their customers be more self sufficient. After all, as Sapient Technologies’ Ed Romaine told me that morning, if you can’t achieve supply chain reliability, you need redundancy—and that’s waste. And for Romaine, the epitome of waste is a technology “solution” touted to be for everyone. Nevertheless, vendors like him are talking less about one-size fits all technology fixes and more about scalability, modularity.

Even Ridge admitted that government has a lot to learn from the private sector about lean thinking. And although the Federal government has invited corporate executives to take part in advisory boards, it not only doesn’t compensate them for their time, it makes them fill out forms to participate. Doesn’t sound like a communication facilitator to me.

Having Ridge as ProMat’s keynoter was a great idea. Although he gave examples of how public/private sector relationships can work under the right conditions, my takeaway was that you better get your own house in order and make sure you can get through tough economic times under your own power—and that of your supply chain partners.

The show floor offered plenty of ideas to inspire such survive-and-prosper strategies. In fact, that strength-in-numbers supply chain approach was evident on the vendor side as well. During my booth visits and press conferences there was tons of news about cooperative relationships among technology providers to help their customers find the right formula for staying lean while being productive about it. I’ll share some of those announcements with you in my next post.

The on-demand model for supply chain execution systems is new enough that even the vendors marketing it are still learning fresh angles. On-demand, also known as “software as a service” (SaaS) is where the application is hosted on the vendor’s server and the user pays for using it—like Cable TV, on a subscription model, rather than having an on-premise license. It’s also part of the cloud computing phenomenon. Tom Kozenski, vice president of product strategy for RedPrairie, told me that this model’s new pricing structure has opened this kind of software up to new sets of clients—the large tier- one companies that had relied on their own WMS before, as well as their smaller trading partners that might not have had a WMS at all. Kozenski says he’s learning as much about the extended supply chains of his customers as his customers’ supply chain partners are learning about this new technology.

“When we announced our presence in on-demand last year, we were approached by our existing customers and they started to describe parts of their supply chain we never knew existed,” he said. “They said ‘I never told you about that because a full blown WMS was not going to be our answer. Now that you have this on demand model I can talk to you about my extended network in Mexico or my 3PL community that helps me provide value added services within the U.S. I want to introduce you to those guys so they can start using the on-demand model to better support what I need to do at their main facilities.’”

This on-demand model is all about scalability—being able to expand one’s vision of supply chain flow as one’s supply chain grows through mergers and acquisitions. Kozenski will be talking about this during a presentation at ProMat on Tuesday, March 22nd, where he’ll join John Hill, vice president of TranSystems, to talk about “Warehouse in the Cloud: Is an SaaS-based WMS Right for You?” This will be a good session for anyone involved in the consumer packaged goods or food and beverage chains where companies are always dealing with the challenges of SKU proliferation. Scalability is key to making sure the system you build today won’t be obsolete or outgrown in five years. Kozenski explains why:

“When you put in a mixing center for a food and beverage manufacturer and their SKUs continue to grow through acquisition or through promotional packaging, they don’t have enough floor space to handle all the SKUs they need to ship,” he told me. “So they change their behavior around pickface slotting to do more dynamic slotting based on where the trucks that I’m going to load will be for the next four hours. Those are the items I want in my pickfaces, and then every four hours I’ll do a reprofiling of the pickfaces to match what goes on the next set of trucks.”

I’ll be at ProMat all week, talking about and seeing technology and best practices like this. I’ll be sure to report back to you what I’m learning at my booth visits. My schedule is packed with them, so I hope I can be as efficient at finding and keeping my next appointments as this technology is at finding and slotting your next shipments.

I was rushing through my morning paper before work when this headline grabbed me: “Mental Health Can Suffer When Jobless Get a Bad Job.” According to a study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the psychosocial quality of work determines whether employment has benefits for mental health. My take-away from this article was, if you’re unemployed, you might have a better chance of keeping all your marbles than someone working and miserable.

Just to be clear, the report does say that moving from unemployment into a high quality job led to improved mental health. However the transition from unemployment to a poor quality job was more detrimental to mental health than remaining unemployed. The report’s conclusion: “Work of poor psychosocial quality does not bestow the same mental health benefits as employment in jobs with high psychosocial quality.”

We write a lot about the physical dangers of operating poorly maintained lift trucks, working around poorly trained lift truck operators, handling broken pallets, falling off docks, picking up heavy products, etc., etc. I’ve even heard about the rise of on-the-job bullying and even physical violence. But this study may add another occupational hazard: psychological damage.

After reading about this study, I took another look at the comments MH&L received from respondents to its annual salary survey. I must say, I’m now a little worried about some of your colleagues. Here’s what some respondents told us:

“I am so disappointed in the new conveyors, vertical lifts, palletizers and wrappers that we installed this year.”

“I am working towards becoming a professional stock options investor, so I’m not the most enthusiastic about my current career.”

“I would be happier if the people who are in the know would understand what their greed has done to individual lives.”

“Increased responsibilities and duties have stretched manpower thin, making it harder to do the job correctly.”

“Low wages – man’s world.”

And finally, the following response to our question “What is the biggest challenge facing the material handling and logistics industry today?”:

“Trying to make a very basic down and dirty industry too complicated.”

I don’t know whether that last person was referring to the material handling industry in general or to our magazine in particular, but I think my feelings are hurt. Where’s OSHA when you need them?

A logistics professional’s biggest fear is the unknown. Unfortunately, logistics professionals connected to last week’s disasters in Japan don’t have the luxury of that fear any more. Survival demands that they act. They can’t rely on past experience to guide their actions, since nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to modern-day Japan. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Naoto Kan told his nation as much, calling the earthquake and tsunami that devastated their country the biggest crisis Japan has faced since it emerged from World War II.

Supply chain managers around the world are now feeling the effects. They have no choice but to find alternatives to their Japanese sources of products and services. Dozens of semiconductor factories were damaged, and that threatens to damage the consumer electronics industry. Even the automotive industry in the U.S. will probably have to scramble to keep production lines running. Consumers all over the world will likely see price increases for many of the technology items they buy.

On a personal level, outside of economic consequences, most people outside Japan reading about this nation’s devastation probably feel horrible about the citizens affected and maybe have been moved to say a little prayer and even make a donation to the Red Cross. However, if you’re reading this blog, chances are your business is not only affected by this, but you may even know people in Japan who are struggling for economic and physical survival.

Before you go to Plan B of your sourcing strategy, reach out to your supply chain partners in Japan and find out how they’re doing—if they’re reachable at all. We’re all human beings first. If they know their business partners are not giving up on them, it will give them more motivation to get through this crisis intact.

This wound is too fresh and massive to understand how to cope with it, let alone treat it. However, if you’re going to ProMat next week, you’ll have a little more motivation to visit the ALAN booth. As we reported last week, The American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) is partnering the Greater Chicago Food Depository (a Feeding America member food bank) and the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) to build food boxes for emergency response. Of course last week this exhibit was supposed to be a way to get attendees involved in responding to smaller-scale disasters by navigating a specially constructed assembly line. By this time next week, ALAN may have a new message to send about the events in Japan.

“We’re staying in close touch with our Association base, having alerted them Friday morning,” says The Terminal Corporation’s John Menzies, who is also president of ALAN. “It takes several days after an event like this for the relief agency community to identify what their needs will be outside of the typical kit they have on hand. They have to assess their needs in light of the event they’re dealing with. That’s when there’s outreach to ALAN and industry.”

Don’t be surprised if ALAN’s theme at the show is adjusted a bit in light of the Japan devastation. Logistics professionals from all over the world will be in attendance and this represents a great opportunity to rally the troops with a direct appeal for their time and talent. I can’t think of a better way to do that than by working with humanitarian organizations like ALAN to repair chains suffering greater trauma than anyone could have planned for. I hope you’ll take part in that solution.

Recent business headlines are implying that rising labor costs in China are diminishing its attractiveness as a sourcing partner. Logistics professionals know better. They know that material handling and logistics efficiencies, combined with a good set of alternative sourcing plans, can help manufacturers protect profit margins.

A recent study by Accenture suggests that low cost countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia may become attractive alternatives for many manufacturers, but they’d still face other challenges like less developed infrastructures in ports, roads and facilities; shortages of skilled workers; and political instability.

The Accenture report suggests that by fostering collaboration between the functional areas of their own facilities and those of their partners in China, and by enhancing labor and process productivity, labor costs won’t be such a burden. But let’s set aside the cost of labor for a second. What about the quality? According to MH&L’s 2011 Salary Survey, to be published in our March issue, several survey respondents indicated they had a talent challenge because talented people aren’t drawn to logistics and those who are usually don’t stay long. Do the Accenture folks agree?

Even at the upper levels in an organization, supply chain needs a stronger presence to attract talent, according to Rich Bergmann, Global Lead in Accenture’s Supply Chain Management Practice. He told me he’s seeing that happen as companies take a multi-disciplinary approach to strengthening their global presence.

“We in the U.S. have taken a more comprehensive view of supply chain from demand planning, procurement and sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and transportation, all the way through customer service, including the reverse logistics service side of the business,” he said. “Companies that have that wide lens can attract great talent because they have that great career diversity. If supply chain was transportation and distribution and that’s it, it would be a less attractive career track. Product design and procurement are often a separate entity and don’t have the interface with supply chain. The attractiveness and draw of top talent from universities is diminished. But now we’re seeing more companies make the chief supply chain officer that C-level executive because supply chain is so important to that company’s growth and financial viability.”

Accenture is in a unique position to assess logistics talent. It hires tens of thousands of people a year to serve its global client base. It used to have to place U.S. citizens into international markets, but now is finding it easier to hire local talent in offshore markets. Even Bergmann has had tours of duty in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Today it hires nationals from those countries and they are on par with U.S. talent, but they also tend to speak English as well as they speak their own language.

Being multi-talented lends itself to having that Plan B, Plan C mentality so critical to supply chain and logistics professionals. You don’t need a global supply chain to convince you of that.

“I’ve been an operations guy for 35 years of my career and you always think you have a good plan until something happens and you have to re-do the plan,” Bergmann says. “It’s not just the planning, you have to align the execution capability very quickly. You don’t have six months to alter the plan. You have days and weeks to alter the execution. There are technologies and business processes and a network of service providers that have to be looked at in combination. Be ready for a change, leverage some of the new supply chain visibility technology, and have a total landed cost management philosophy.”

Thinking about the cost of labor in China is just one of the many metrics supply chain professionals need to watch on a weekly basis. Annual, even semi-annual situational awareness won’t cut it anymore. In fact here’s something you can put on a mug and issue it to all new hires in their orientation package: “Supply chains = Supply Change.” Let’s drink to that.

A stretch of Interstate 480 near my home in Independence, Ohio spans the Cuyahoga River Valley. It’s known as the Valley View Bridge. I drive over it frequently, never thinking of the 200-foot drop I would experience if my car ever sailed over the edge. It’s an experience nobody could describe because nobody could survive it. It was the last experience Larry Cunningham ever had.

On February 22nd he was driving a tractor trailer owned by Gray Container over the bridge when all of a sudden, for some reason, he hit the brakes. His rig jackknifed, sending him and his cab off the side of the bridge. Could this accident have been avoided? Sure, maybe the barriers on the side of the bridge are too low. But what about the truck itself?

The local news reported that according to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records, Gray Container was inspected 19 times over the last two years, and the company’s four listed vehicles were placed out of service on 15 of those occasions. While the cab of Mr. Cunningham’s truck was too damaged to tell inspectors much, 19 inspections in two years smells like a smoking gun to me.

I tell you about this because although Gray may be a small fish in the trucking industry, plenty of big companies have been found guilty of ignoring the safety of their drivers. As we reported yesterday, UPS reached a $1.3 million settlement with the New York State Attorney General’s Office for permitting package-delivery trucks in serious disrepair to be used by UPS employees throughout the state. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said UPS knowingly endangered not only the lives of their own employees but the lives of the driving public. “By keeping these rotting and decaying trucks on the roadways,” he added, UPS was an accident waiting to happen, and this office has zero tolerance for anyone who knowingly poses a serious and significant risk to New Yorkers.”

No logistics professional, whether an executive or a lift truck driver, should ignore the lessons to be learned from these headlines. The fact they happened outside your four-walled sanctuary doesn’t make you or the people in your plant or distribution center immune from the consequences of safety violations, willful or not. Lift truck deaths make headlines too.

Last year, in a Sonoco Recycling facility in Salisbury, North Carolina, Plant Supervisor Maurice Jay Alexander was crushed by an 800 lb bale of cardboard that fell off his lift truck’s tines. Apparently he had stepped off the lift truck to make an adjustment and the bale fell while he was in front of the machine. According to the Charlotte office of the North Carolina Department of Labor’s division of occupational health and safety, Sonoco Recycling failed to train and evaluate this operator in the safe operation of his particular vehicle. And according to a report from ForkliftAction.com, Sonoco Recycling faces additional sanctions for more recent violations involving inadequate operator training. Apparently Mr. Alexander’s death wasn’t a sufficient lesson for them.

Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Alexander were family men. The only solace their employers can offer these families is the hope that their loved ones didn’t die in vain. Let’s all hope rigorous operator training and equipment maintenance become these men’s legacies.