PEER Bearing, a Waukegan, Ill.-based manufacturer of bearings for the material handling industry, among others, is enhancing its safety efforts with the help of Crown Equipment, New Bremen, Ohio. Through working with Crown Equipment, PEER Bearing is now able to leverage operational data from its forklift fleet and reinforce safe operating practices throughout its 200,000-square-foot distribution center.

With safety being a cornerstone of its company culture, PEER Bearing’s warehouse personnel regularly consider new tools that can help reinforce positive behavior. As a result, they selected Crown Equipment’s InfoLink fleet and operator management system to effectively capture and package operational data to improve safety.

Today, InfoLink provides PEER Bearing with impact detection to help change operator mindsets and make safety a priority in their day-to-day operations. Additionally, the system’s electronic pre-shift inspections help ensure every forklift is safe to operate and the company’s inspection system is OSHA-compliant.

“InfoLink is a great addition to our fleet. Our operators have become more aware as to safety and the operation of the trucks. The impact detection feature is certainly a great deterrent to preventing those behaviors that would cause operators to get into accidents,” says Leo Linval, assembly and repack supervisor for PEER Bearing. “InfoLink has definitely contributed to the safety in our operation by being another set of eyes out on the floor when supervisors obviously can’t be everywhere at once.”

PEER Bearing’s distribution center in Waukegan handles bearings manufactured throughout the company’s global network of facilities. It receives approximately 100 pallets of material each day and processes a variety of outbound orders ranging from single packages to full pallets. PEER Bearing’s forklift fleet includes a variety of Crown order pickers, reach trucks, stand-up counterbalance trucks and narrow-aisle turret trucks, among others.

In addition to PEER Bearing’s implementation of InfoLink and its fleet of Crown trucks, operators attended a 2-day Crown Equipment Demonstrated Performance TrainSafe Train-the-Trainer course designed to provide the skills and tools necessary to efficiently train colleagues regarding truck features and safe operation. 

“It gave me a lot of insight into the safety and the OHSA standards that go into the overall safety of our operations,” says Linvall. “I have a plethora of tools at my disposal that I can use to correct bad behaviors and to help drivers improve on current behaviors that they may have.”