If you run a manufacturing business that specialises in steel fabrication, here are two steps that you can take to maintain high productivity levels in your facility.

Make sure that employees have access to the safety gear that they need

If you want to ensure that your employees remain productive all day long, it is vital to ensure that they have access to the type of safety gear that they need. This is because many steel fabrication processes require the use of machinery that is extremely powerful.

If your employees operate this machinery without first donning the appropriate type of safety gear, they could sustain serious injuries that could not only affect both their short- and long-term health but which could also result in a drastic reduction in your facility's productivity levels.

For example, if a staff member who needs to weld two pieces of steel together only has access to standard safety goggles, rather than ones that have a specialist, UV-protective coating, their corneas could end up being burned by the UV radiation produced by the welding machine.

This could result in them having to take an extended amount of time off work to recover. In this situation, you would either have to assign another employee who is trained in welding to finish off the ill employee's work (which may affect the speed with which they complete their other tasks) or spend your time and financial resources hiring a temporary replacement. This, in turn, could have a serious impact on your enterprise's overall productivity levels.

Keep your indoor lifting equipment in good working order

Steel products tend to be very heavy. As a result of this, most steel fabrication facilities use indoor lifting equipment (such as forklifts and hydraulic stackers) to lift and move their steel products around the buildings.

If this is the case in your facility and you are keen to keep your productivity levels as high as possible, you should invest time and money into keeping this equipment in good working order. If the equipment is not well-maintained, it is far more likely to prematurely break down or malfunction, and in doing so, lower your facility's productivity levels. 

If, for example, a forklift breaks down when it is being used to move some raw materials to a specific part of the facility so that these materials can undergo processing, the operator would have to wait until the equipment was repaired (or alternatively, try to find another available forklift) before they could deliver the materials to their destination. This would then result in the delay of the processing of these materials, which could, in turn, have a negative impact on your facility's productivity levels. As such, it's important to ensure that you have your equipment inspected and maintained on a regular basis.

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