Ep. #15: COVID-19, Employee Separation, & Safety

This episode of Right from the Source features Matt Fleckenstein, original vice president of On this episode, he discusses how colourful And ways to keep workers safe. You're listening to right from the source. Expert insights on safety, security, and you can see. productivity, energy savings, and environmental control. Your industrial or commercial facilities. listening to right from the source and on with us today we welcome back Matt Fleckenstein.

Hi Matt. Well good morning gentlemen. How are you today? Doing well, doing well. Fantastic. Uh we're living in the world of COVID nineteen currently and today's topic we're gonna talk a little bit about uh the pandemic and and uh what businesses and facilities are doing today and what they might be doing tomorrow to try and prevent the spread of uh an infectious uh virus.

Before we get into that though, Matt, tell us a little bit about yourself starting with your title at Right Height and kind of how you got to be where you are today. Certainly. My uh name is Matt Flackenstein. I'm a regional vice president. Uh with Right Height out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Been with Right Height now, goodness, going on a little over 12 years. Been in the cold storage industry. Uh well in excess of twenty years now, uh without dating myself too much.

Really just kinda moved around through the different operating companies and products and uh at this state now at the uh vice president level and uh enjoying my uh tenure with the company. So definitely some good background to talk about today's topic. But before we do

hop into that. Before this recording we talked a little bit about some of your hobbies and passions that you've been picking up on here lately. Uh would you like to tell the listeners about some of the things you like to do outside of work? You know, it's it's a changing world we live in. There's no two ways about that. And uh our our social get togethers and hanging out with friends and that sort of stuff has definitely changed for all of us.

It's allowed me to spend a little time out fishing and and enjoying nature and wish I could say a lot more time with my kids, but it seems to be more time with my kids dogs as the as the kids are working. So it uh it's amazing how how life continues and and it's a constant evolution.

So let's dive into some of our questions here, uh talking about uh COVID nineteen. Obviously it's it's had a a huge impact. and really the entire world, um not just here in the US. Um yet there are so many facilities Uh especially in the supply chain that it's a very good idea. had to stay open to serve people and and deliver product that just uh i is essential, whether it's food, pharmaceutical, or even, you know, whatever kind of widgets you need.

Absolutely. And it's a double edged sword to be an essential business. Uh right height is an essential business. It's nice to be employed, it's nice to be actively employed, but you know, your your number one priority is to uh you know protect the health of your employees. Yeah. So with that there's been many, many challenges. Uh obviously as a manufacturer and as a distributor and retailer we we've faced many of these issues. Um a lot of people in their manufacturing have had to

Downsize the number of people in the plants to be able to space them out, to be able to give them that distancing and so forth. They may have to add ships. to be able to still accomplish the uh the goal of what they're they're producing. Um it's it's created quite a quite a few hardships. Food and pharma may be a little bit ahead of the curve. Those industries, they created food defense strategies and so forth to help mitigate or eliminate the potential for for contamination of products.

Now we're obviously looking at contaminations of people as well, separating people, having an designated in routes, out routes. regular or or accelerated sanitation. health checks routinely, um all of these things come at great costs, but obviously um the the the net result is to to have a healthy personnel and a healthy company. And it's evolved.

and what can you do to help protect people other than spacing them out, obviously providing sanitation stations, places they can clean. keeping face coverings, things of of of that nature, but also eliminating these common touch surfaces, getting rid of push buttons. Getting rid of door handles, getting rid you know, any common touch where everybody has to go in and out. So a lot of these doorways. personnel traffic. They may be switching out a manual door to an automated

On their equipment. Yeah, I believe in our last uh segment we talked about how equipment is evolving and becoming smart. Well, by tying smart equipment into software, now as we're reducing our staff in our facility, I still have full visibility of all of my loading dock. Not only that, with with some of the software and smart equipment intermixes, I know exactly what's going on at all of my docks, well beyond what I've ever been able to do previously, to know when a trailer hits the yard.

when it's been you know brought to a a loading dock position. When it's been secured, the doors are open, what the load times are. For many people, even when they're short handed, they may have detention and have fines for exceeding time limits of loading or unloading trailers.

So some of these things to help you know uh document the times that they've been on there, but also to to identify how long those have been the trailers have been in position and what the urgency is to get them loaded and moved out of out of position. LGVs, AS, AR systems, LGV would be a laser guided vehicle.

ASARs, uh automated storage and automated retrieval systems. Again, issues that allow people to stay in operation shorthanded. We're also looking at a lot of retailers or a lot of people who have products to take to market. who are looking to either get into a warehouse space or co-op a warehouse space. So that when if retail does close again

that they're able to get to market and that they're able to get to their consumers. Because you do see a shift in the success rate of companies, of those who are able to adapt to apps, who have smart equipment, who have Ways of protecting their employees and keeping everybody healthy, and at the same time maintaining the productivity of their facilities.

You know, we talked about in routes, out routes. We may put curtains or our zone works division, our partitions, our soft wall partitions, again, to separate people in in clean areas from non-clean areas. You may have uh a lot of people in warehouses are now repacking goods.

goods that were previously sold industrial an industrial end user had a restaurant, had a commercial end user, which now it may those products may be going to a big box uh warehouse club or it may be going to a retail grocery store. again needs to be repacked, resorted before it can be distributed.

These uh areas are set up in warehouses all over the place. Again, employees have to be spread out. So whether you put physical barriers in place that can stop the movement of a forklift, or you're identifying it um uh by multiple different means, be it signage, be it by large curtain walls.

uh different colors, uh uh other barriers that come in the way that that can all be done as well. You kinda mentioned uh Matt uh early on that Really the the food and pharma industries uh specifically might have had a head start on some of this too in in in processes and and operations and some of the equipment that they had. Are you finding that in other industries there

They are catching up to maybe some of the same things that the food and farm is doing? Absolutely. They're adapting some of the practice. So in food and pharma, not only are you looking to eliminate any contamination or any of that, but it's also very temperature-specific. So same thing when we start talking about people, one is giving them an environment that's comfortable to work in, um, be it with high volume uh uh low speed fans.

or be it through our H VAC s systems, changing over uh the air exchange in those rooms and filterization again to make sure that we keep it as clean as possible. But it but absolutely you're seeing the removal of again the the push buttons, the door handles, going to automated doors. When somebody leaves a door open again with smart equipment, you can be notified of these. If you are short staffed on your dock.

on your loading docks and somebody tries to circumvent some of your safety procedures you have in place. it will identify these events and notify you of them again to to protect the welfare of your employees and the company as well for if they were to get hurt or or anything were to happen while they were doing anything out of the normal process.

Yeah. So getting even a little higher tech, I mean a a lot of you know what we hear the average person is gonna hear things like wear a mask and, you know, stay socially distant, six feet apart and and obviously a lot of these facilities are going to, you know, require uh certain elements of these things and practice them as best they can, but there are even these more like high tech solutions that that you've been referring to too, uh uh whether it's

through smart equipment and and I IoT and really just kind of a a next level uh really of of looking at ways to to kind of make a facility safer, whether it's from, you know, COVID nineteen or or other kinds of uh potential uh hazards. Yeah, absolutely. And and everybody has a different situation. And that's a another challenge of it is every application is a little different.

Is there anything that you feel like we didn't ask or that we didn't cover that you wanted to mention in in relation to to COVID nineteen and maybe some and again every facility is different, but some general best practices that most facilities, warehouses could take into

You you know a lot of their they're really doing a great job overall. you know, checking people's temperatures that there's as they're coming in, giving the abilities and making sure people are staying clean and washing their hands and covering their faces, trying to maintain the distance. uh when it comes to the logistics, making you know, separating drivers, over the road drivers.

They could be traveling the country and not only letting them inter mingle with people in the facilities, creating special areas for them, or keeping them in their trucks throughout this this uh loading and unloading durations. So everybody's really stepping up and and doing their part. It's it's been a struggle. Uh it's been a learning curve for everybody involved. For the most part, everybody is really, really doing an outstanding job. You know, our our communication with our

Customer base is really essential. When we talk about the Fortune 100 companies, we talk about the Fortune 500 companies. We talk about the mom and pop shops and things of that nature and to be able to share that expertise with everybody and to give'em the latest practices. uh to protect them within their environment and their application. Um you know, Right Height can't do this alone. Uh we we depend on the communication from our our customers and those in fighting this every day.

to help us and and direct us in the development of products and to make sure that we're doing the best thing we can for their operations and for everybody uh involved. No, v very well said. And honestly, as as we do more and more of these podcasts, it's a very common theme that I've heard from everyone at Right Height, the you know, listening to and working with customers and especially for something as as ever evolving as COVID nineteen, that's that's a great policy to have company wide.

Um, with that, uh thank you so much for your time again, Matt. It's a pleasure as always and some some valuable insights to consider here as we dive deeper into the future of COVID nineteen. So for listeners, be sure to follow RightHeight on all social media platforms and visit right.com for additional information or to connect with a team member. Thanks again, Matt.

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