Measurement and Analysis of Vibration Levels on Warehouse and Retail Store Material Handling Equipment

Material Handling Equipment (MHE) is widely used to move packaged goods from manufacturing to warehousing, storage, transportation, in both warehouses and distribution centers to retail stores. Moving product between facilities is done by different types of equipment ranging from manually pushed carts to automated vehi­ cles. A considerable amount of research has been conducted to eval­ uate the ergonomics of manual or mechanized MHE in the past. There is, however, no published work documenting vibration conditions that occur when transporting packages using MHE. This study measured the vibration levels for typical MHE used at warehousing facilities. Power spectral density plots were generated for both loaded and empty configurations of the seven types of MHE. Vibration levels for both the inside and outside floor and pavement surface conditions at warehouses were also studied.