Verve Motion’s SafeLift™ exosuit is helping transform the way grocery distribution facilities operate, bringing ergonomic relief and efficiency to demanding environments where workers handle heavy, repetitive lifting.
Here we summarize how SafeLift™ serves diverse grocery distribution applications, from food distribution to healthcare.
Addressing the Unique Demands of Grocery Distribution
Grocery distribution workers lift up to 50,000 pounds daily, equivalent to the weight of a shipping container. These tasks can lead to overexertion injuries, fatigue, and high employee turnover rates. SafeLift™ addresses these issues by reducing the physical strain on workers, making it an ideal solution for industry sectors with repetitive lifting tasks.
First, let’s review the key application areas and use cases featuring repetitive and heavy lifting.
Receiving and Storage
- Unloading Shipments: Workers unload trucks filled with crates and cases of grocery products, including perishable and non-perishable items. These loads can involve heavy and repetitive lifting throughout the day.
- Receiving Dock Sorting: Sorting and organizing incoming goods by category (frozen, refrigerated, dry goods) for easier storage in designated areas.
- Cold Storage Placement: Workers place perishable items like dairy, meat, and produce in refrigerated or frozen storage areas. Exosuits can assist with the repetitive lifting and bending required to organize these items.
- Palletizing in Cold Storage: Building pallets for frozen or refrigerated goods involves handling heavy and awkwardly shaped packages while ensuring stability, which can be physically demanding, especially in cold environments.
Order Picking and Fulfillment
- Grocery Warehouse Picking: Workers retrieve items from various aisles, often lifting heavy boxes and crates for order fulfillment. This can be especially physically demanding during peak periods like holidays.
- Pallet Staging: Workers stage multiple orders on pallets, which requires lifting and stacking products efficiently for easy transport while minimizing strain from bending and lifting.
- Packing and Loading for Delivery: Packing online grocery orders involves organizing items carefully for transport, with some orders requiring temperature-controlled packaging and handling.
Loading, Distribution, and Store Replenishment
- Truck Loading: For distribution, workers load prepared pallets into trucks, requiring both heavy lifting and care to ensure that perishable items are properly handled and secured for transit.
- Direct Store Delivery Preparation: Preparing and loading smaller orders for local grocery stores, which often includes organizing and loading heavy crates of dairy, frozen items, or beverages.
- In-Store Replenishment: Delivering items directly to grocery stores involves navigating tight spaces and carrying crates or boxes of perishable and non-perishable goods to stock on shelves.
- Cold and Frozen Aisle Restocking: Stocking freezers and coolers with frozen foods, dairy, and produce, often requiring careful lifting in cold environments.
SafeLift™ for Cold Storage Applications
A couple words regarding cold storage applications within the grocery distribution sector. These include tasks such as handling produce, meat, dairy, frozen goods, and delicate items like seafood and ice cream. This work supports operations in refrigerated warehouses, convenience store distribution, and online grocery fulfillment.
It’s important to note that case weights in refrigerated and frozen environments are typically higher than in other areas, often leading to elevated back injury rates among workers.
To address these challenges, SafeLift provides adjustable assistance profiles tailored to freezer scenarios. These profiles are designed to accommodate heavier goods and items requiring precision handling, such as fragile containers or meat and poultry carcasses with specialized handling needs. And, the SafeLift suit can be used under or over-insulating clothing, depending on selector preference, with a battery life for a full shift even at freezer temperatures.
SafeLift™ Suit
SafeLift™ is a soft, lightweight exosuit that fits like a backpack, providing up to 40% strain reduction with each lift. The suit assists the body’s natural musculature, working in tandem with underlying muscles to reduce the load placed on them. The powered assistance allows workers to perform physically demanding tasks with less strain and fatigue, enhancing their safety and stamina over long shifts.
The exosuit’s assistance profile and force level are fully customizable, to support custom tasks and scenarios within their unique environment.
Whether lifting heavy items repeatedly or handling delicate products, SafeLift™ provides the right level of assistance for optimal performance. The SafeLift™ exosuit offers assistance profiles that can be adapted to specific needs. Assistance profiles optimized for grocery distribution include:
- Lifting Assistance: Ideal for repetitive lifting in selection applications.
- Lowering Assistance: Useful in palletizing or cross-docking tasks, as well as handling particularly heavy and/or fragile items.
- Static Assistance: Beneficial for manufacturing tasks involving prolonged bending.
- Transparent Mode: Engaged when workers don’t need assistance, such as while walking or wrapping pallets.
Field Results: Measurable Impacts on Safety, Productivity, and Satisfaction
Customer sites deploying SafeLift report three key categories of benefits:
- Lower Injury Rates: 60-85% reduction in injuries, preventing costly incidents.
- Enhanced Productivity: By reducing fatigue, facilities using SafeLift™ report 2-8% productivity improvements.
- Higher Job Satisfaction: With reduced physical strain, worker satisfaction and retention increase, lowering turnover and recruitment costs.
Here are the 3 case studies:
Bringing SafeLift™ to Your Facility
SafeLiftTM provides a comprehensive solution for grocery distribution facilities facing the challenges of repetitive heavy lifting, proving indispensable in enhancing worker safety, operational efficiency, and overall job satisfaction.
Verve Motion offers on-site demos to allow teams to experience SafeLift™ in their unique environments. These trials provide insights into how the exosuit can meet specific lifting and operational challenges, setting the stage for safer, more efficient, and satisfying work environments.