From Tomorrow’s World to today

Keith Smith, sales, training & product development manager, Toyota Material Handling UK showed a 20-year old video from the programme Tomorrow’s World highlighting Toyota’s patented SAS safety systems.

Keith explains: “The Tomorrow’s World video shows Toyota’s long history of forklift innovation, with safety a key driver for many years.

“SAS automatically takes corrective action when forklifts are in danger of losing balance. It provides such abilities as automatic curve control, active mast front tilt angle control, and active control rear stabiliser, among other features.”

The system also comes in to its own in terms of limiting damage costs in the warehouse.

“Launched in 1999, the SAS system is 20 years old, and it can fit to any forklift from one tonne to 8.5 tonne models,” says Keith.

Visual safety systems

Toyota has also released LED lighting options to further enhance safety. These include Blue Spot lights, and red light curtains, all aimed at boosting pedestrian awareness that there is a forklift in the vicinity.

Forklift brain

I_Site, Toyota’s fleet management system is the brain behind many forklift fleets across the land, and is perhaps Toyota’s core safety product.

Keith explains: “Access control is managed via I_Site, which only allows licensed individuals to use specific trucks.

“This can also manage when refresher training is required for operators.

“One of the biggest wins is pre-op check management. Results are fully recorded making it a much more robust system than using a paper checklist. This means if records have to be checked subsequently, there will be no holes in the data.”

I_Site is also available as a Smartphone App, and managers can receive alerts on, for example, red level shocks.