When purchasing a lifting aid, the initial focus is often on the purchase price. That is understandable, but it is usually not the right question to ask.
Consider:
Physical strain in the workplace can lead to health issues and employee turnover, which ultimately impacts process continuity.
Many organizations have a clear view of their machinery, energy, and maintenance costs. The costs of manual handling, however, often remain under the radar.
Yet, these can be significant:
According to the Occupational Health and Safety portal, both heavy loads and frequent lifting from awkward working postures can lead to health problems. Back complaints are among the most common causes of absenteeism.
A lifting aid usually doesn't pay for itself through a single benefit. It is almost always a combination of factors.
When employees don't have to do as much heavy lifting, physical strain decreases. This contributes to healthier and more sustainable employee employability. Both TNO and Arboportaal highlight the link between physical strain, health issues, and absenteeism.
A lifting task that can be performed faster, more easily, and more consistently saves time every day. On an annual basis, even a small improvement per task can have a significant effect on total productivity.
Manually moving fragile or heavy products increases the risk of damage. A well-chosen lifting solution provides more control when moving products.
In many companies, certain tasks require two employees. With the right lifting solution, the same task can often be performed safely by one employee.
This is particularly interesting in a labor market where technical personnel are scarce.
When calculating the payback period of a lifting aid, people often look at cost savings. In practice, however, the biggest benefits often arise in other areas.
Sometimes products are tailored to what employees can still handle manually.
Consider, for example, film rolls that are manually placed into a packaging machine. When a roll weighs 23 kilograms, an employee can usually still change it independently. However, that also means the machine has to be stopped relatively often for a roll change.
With a lifting aid, larger rolls can be processed, for example, 50 or 100 kilograms. As a result, fewer changes are needed, downtime decreases, and there can be less material waste.
An employee can usually only pick up one product at a time.
With a lifting solution, multiple products can be moved at once in some applications, or even entire layers of products can be picked up.
This not only provides ergonomic benefits but also increases process capacity.
A lifting aid is not always used to move products from A to B.
A lifting solution is often used as a tool during assembly work.
Consider, for example, a glass pane that is picked up with vacuum . Instead of setting it down immediately, the glass pane remains positioned at an ergonomic working height while employees assemble components. Afterward, the finished product is placed directly onto a transport rack or storage location.
This often results in a faster and more ergonomic assembly process.
Sometimes the gains are found even outside of production.
Take empty barrels, for example. Manually, these can often only be stacked to a limited height. With a suitable lifting solution, it is sometimes possible to stack more efficiently and process more volume per transport movement.
This can provide direct benefits for logistics processes.
Do you recognize one or more of the situations below?
A common misconception is that a lifting solution always requires a large investment.
In practice, there are many different options, ranging from standard solutions to fully customized ones.
Which solution is most suitable depends on factors such as:
That is why a good business case almost always starts with an analysis of the current process.
When it comes to investments, people often ask: What does a lifting aid cost? Perhaps a better question is: What does it cost us to continue working the way we do now? But just as important is a second question: What could a lifting aid do for us?
When physical strain, lost time, product damage, absenteeism, and process improvements are all taken into account, a lifting aid often proves to be profitable much sooner than expected.
A lifting aid is more than just an ergonomic tool.
It can contribute to:
The payback period varies by situation, but one thing is almost always true:
That is why the question doesn't start with the product. It starts with the process.
Because ultimately, it is not the purchase price of a lifting aid that determines its profitability, but the value it adds to daily operations.
