How suppliers can help contractors reduce their warehouses.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States resulting in hundreds of fatalities each year.

Currently, workplaces in the United States function under the Hazard Communication Standard 1910.1200 as published in the Code of Federal Regulations on March 11, 1994 - also referred to as HCS 1994.

The Hermitage/Sharon corridor on Interstate 80 in northwestern Pennsylvania is a crossroads for the past and the future. The massive Sharon Steel mill once employed more than 10,000 people.

The first step in the process of developing a RPP is to conduct an industrial hygiene audit of the workplace to assess the presence of any atmospheric contaminants. Respiratory hazards can take the form of harmful dust, fogs, fumes, mists, gases, smoke, sprays or vapors.

It sounds like pie in the sky, yet one of my clients is considering implementing extensive automation to avoid the ever-escalating costs of labor. His vision would still involve some people, not a totally peopleless warehouse - one in which, day and night, all physical movement of items is handled by automated equipment controlled by software.