Wilton Brandon Safety Manager LP Testimonial

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the analogy that I want to use is you know we make cards. You know you guys race with those cards, right? So we make cards and we make a lot of assumptions and blah blah blah. Then we make cards and we give them to you guys, and you guys race. Then you come and tell us, “Hey, this is great; this is not great.” That is very important because then we know, “Hey, we are doing our job right.” That’s the type of experience that I want to get you from.

So yeah, thank you very much for taking this time. This means a lot for us, right? Learning about the user experience and how the product is helping you, how the product is adding value, and making your life easier. At the end of the day, right, it’s about making it even better. So yeah, if you could start with a quick introduction about yourself and the role and how you ran into Load Proof and stuff like that, we can get started there.

Well, I’m in charge of safety for building safety. I also certify everybody on the lift trucks. A lot of things are involved with that. Since Load Proof is something new, I’ve had to go through and certify all the teams on there and make sure that they’re using it properly for what our supervisors and customers need. As far as I know, that’s worked out really well, and we’ve been able to trace back specifics and handle some disputes with loads.

I don’t have any specific modes. I asked my supervisor to give me some information, and he said, “Oh no, just leave that for other teams.” But I just want to talk about my end of it. It’s been pretty good, pretty user-friendly. Omar has always been very available. Whenever we have any sort of issues or problems, he’s always right on top of it, getting other people involved in case there’s anything that escalates. We’ve been able to tie everything up really well, and the teams are using it. Everything’s going well going forward.

So what was the problem you guys had before, and what is it that you’re doing now? How is that making it better for you guys? Oh yeah, we were having some issues with the sign-ons. Some people were using an old sign-on from an employee that didn’t work here anymore. Then you had everybody trying to use the same sign-on, and they were getting kicked off and locked up. I was able to get with Omar and get some other sign-ons so that everybody can have their own individual one. Now everything is running much more smoothly.

From a safety perspective, what was it that you guys struggled with before Load Proof, and what is it you’re able to do better now? From a safety standpoint, I’m able to input all the data for accidents. I can take photos and know where it is, creating a database of all the different issues. Specifically, something like rack damage. Throughout the year, we get incidents where people run into a rack here and there. Sometimes they’re not that bad, but it gets difficult to keep track of everything.

Now I have everything in one place. I don’t have just sheets of paper or a bunch of different photos I have to find on one of my drives. So what are your drivers doing? Are they driving forklifts or Cherry Pickers? What are they driving? Oh, all of that: forklifts, Cherry Pickers, reach trucks.

Um, EPJS walking Riders, yeah we got a lot of different pieces of equipment. It’s a pretty decent-sized facility; I don’t know if you had a chance to be over here, but it’s almost a million square feet. Wow, okay, man, that’s large. We got two facilities that we have; they’re both about the same size.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. So, I’m primarily a rope two; I do go over to row one and help out over there from time to time. Destiny, they’re here now. Mostly what we’ve been using it for is the loads that are going out, to keep track. So these are loaders that are loading the pallets on the truck, yes.

And they have their smartphone or something, or device, and they take it out and then take photos. Yeah, we got a tablet, so they’re taking photos of the load before they put it on and then kind of as they’re loading—not necessarily a photo of each pallet, but a handful. Then we’ll get another photo of the trailer number, and we can put in some information from our bill of lading.

Yep, and then we’ll have all that in one spot so that we can pull it back up in case we need to. Great, great. So that’s at the time of loading, and then you’re also documenting safety lessons, and we’re getting in products. Obviously, the stuff has got to come into the building.

If there’s ever any issues, like, okay, now we’ve got this pallet, but the pallet is damaged, or we got this trailer, but the trailer has a hole in the roof and now there’s water damage. We can take photos of all that stuff, and then we can go back to the vendor and say, “Here we had this happen with this load.” Not only that, but over time we can see if we keep having problems with this vendor or whoever we’re going through.

So we can plantain support. Oh, great, good! So you’re using it for inbound and vendor performance. Yes, we first started off using it for the outbound and then I’ve been slowly integrating it into safety since I’m already working with everybody on it anyway. Right now we’re just kind of getting going using it for the inbound.

So, we may end up needing to change some of the menu screens or something like that. I know Omar is available whenever we have anything come up, so right now we’re just going through a few and we’re gonna see if there’s anything else that we need to have changed. Great, great.

So are these vendors overseas or local domestic vendors? Well, we got local domestic, and we have containers that come in from overseas. Oh, okay, great, great. So yeah, we’re dealing with both. Like I said, we just started that, so we haven’t really had any issues yet.

But yeah, everything so far has been going pretty good. So important issues with the tablet that we had—just updates and stuff and learning curve too. I mean, I’m an iPhone user, so—oh yeah, you can put it in your iPhone too. Yes, that’s so much better. As long as the reason why we recommend tablets is because often the van houses have a no mobile device policy.

Correct, right. If we have a load and some of the product doesn’t fit, we tell them, “Hey, take a picture and get that information to your supervisor.” How they’re going to take a picture is using the phones. Okay, so now we take that out of their hands, we get the tablet, and you’re documenting everything. All right, so we’re able to cut that down.