After two successful years at the “Archies,”Doosan Infracore made it three in a row by picking up the Fork Lift Truck Association Award for Safety Excellence, 2007. The industry’s equivalent of the Oscars drew visitors from far and wide, including China, Germany and the US, amongst the large crowd of forklift truck executives, all vying for the prestigious statuette, modeled on Greek mathematician and philosopher, Archimedes.
The Excellence awards were staged at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole and cover such areas as Ergonomics, Environment and Innovation. They are the FLTA’s way of rewarding those companies enhancing both safety and productivity in the workplace. The FLTA exists to raise standards in the materials handling industry, protecting the interests of consumers, as well as highlighting important industry issues.
The Safety category is especially sought after, being voted for by members of the public, via industry magazine Storage Handling Distribution. This year four companies joined Doosan as nominees: CAT Lift Trucks for the high visibility PoweRamic mast; Contact Attachments for a fork fender device; Linde for their tilt jacks and visibility on the electric range and Looplifter, a loop lifting system for bags.
Doosan’s safety nomination highlighted the Operator Sensing System, a simple detection system to prevent mis-operation. To prevent motion of the truck without an operator in the seated position, the OSS will place the transmission in neutral within approximately three seconds of the operator’s leaving the seat.
Additionally, an alarm will sound if the operator does not apply the parking brake upon exiting the machine. When the operator returns to the seated position, he then selects the desired direction. The double-acting parking lever gives added reassurance via a warning buzzer, if the operator leaves without engaging the brake. The Doosan Operator Sensing System (OSS) is standard on all the latest models.