ARC Wodonga introduces successful safety and efficiency initiative

There has been a raft of positive changes taking place at our ARC Wodonga (Victoria) branch this year including the addition of Rod Meeuwissen, our new Operations Team Leader in April.

Rod has been part of the InfraBuild family since 2021 and has added immense value to the teams he works with in terms of both safety and efficiency.

Using inspiration from a recent initiative at ARC Wagga (NSW), Rod and the Wodonga team collaborated with local business, Albury Engineering. to build a unique prototype of a Bulk Bag Trolley, which is used to hold Bulk Bags open to then fill with produced bar and transport them across the warehouse ready for loading or pick-up.

Over the course of two months, the effective use and benefits of the trolley were evaluated whilst looking for opportunities for further improvement and refinement.

Findings from the evaluation were that operators are now able to fit 20 percent more processed bars into each bag and use two hands to load the product. This is alongside manual handling benefits for workers who now have less hunching and twisting due to the bag being higher off the floor.

As a result of this innovation, ARC Wodonga subsequently:

· increased efficiency;

· improved turnaround from one product to the next; and

· significantly reduce manual handling injury risks.