Most supply chain leaders understandably prioritize productivity as a tool to keep or increase throughput and efficiency. Nevertheless, for many, forklift batteries do not always factor into the productivity equation. Forklift batteries — whether they are lead acid or lithium-ion batteries — are one of the most critical factors that can decide how well your supply chain serves. When they fail, it can mean that not all your forklifts are open and operating to standards when you require them most.
Here are six suggestions for properly maintaining your forklift batteries to help battery performance, uptime, and supply chain productivity.
Conduct a power analysis. The best way to achieve insight into your batteries’ performance is to conduct a power study. A power analysis combines monitoring, data analytics, and expert insight to deliver fleet managers with suggestions and the most promising practices for enhancing forklift battery performance.
By working with a forklift provider to employ battery monitoring technology, real-time data can be assembled from a broad sampling of repeatedly used forklifts. This data will demonstrate how your fleet regularly consumes and reloads power. Modeling that evaluates the applications, power usage, and additional charging scenarios can also assist in determining the best charging procedure, including the number and locations of charging posts. A power study can even assist you decide whether introducing lithium-ion batteries is the exemplary choice for your operation.
Track your batteries
Construct an accurate inventory of your batteries to select a baseline for future years. Annually document each battery’s state and capacity level, and conduct tests to help decide battery health. Correcting the list every year will allow you to keep an accurate profile of your batteries, allowing you to better understand how your battery requires change, particularly as your applications and equipment change.
Many forklift fleet management systems allow you to monitor the health of your batteries remotely. Using this monitoring technology, you can recognize each battery’s remaining cycles and the life left. This knowledge will assist you in creating battery performance profiles that track performance throughout a given span or for a particular application to provide optimal performance. Knowing the current health situation of the batteries will also provide you with information critical to troubleshooting maintenance issues before they lead to premature battery failure.
Right-size your battery utilization
Right-sizing your battery utilization includes correct-sizing your batteries not only to the requirements of your fleet but also to the applications or processes that your forklifts perform. Comprehending your fleet utilization and conducting a power study will assist you in determining the number of batteries you require. Moving forward, every right-sizing activity you conduct with your fleet should include battery utilization knowledge. Supplied with real-time, accurate battery performance data and the capability to track amp hours and hours of work (throughput), you can better comprehend your battery capabilities.
This means you can more accurately determine which charging method or schedule works nicely for each battery, and which batteries work best in certain trucks and applications. Targeting specific batteries for particular applications further enhances the efficiencies of battery rotation and eventually supports better battery runtime. Right-sizing respective batteries for specific applications can be specifically important if you are considering switching from lead-acid to lithium-ion batteries. Frequently, because of the opportunity charging utilized with lithium-ion batteries, a smaller capacity battery can be operated.
Evolve your Forklift charging procedure
The data gathered from your power study and monitoring technology will enable you to more accurately determine which charging method or charging frequency works sufficiently for your batteries and operation. Once you’ve made this conclusion, you can use further information from the power study and monitoring technology to decide how many chargers you need to support your fleet, and where they should be established in your facility to keep or increase productivity.
One characteristic often overlooked is cable management, which has become critically critical, regardless of the type of batteries and chargers being used. Connectors can be a primary loss point in the battery/charger system. Failure to appropriately route and support charging cables can accelerate wear, tear, and breakage of connectors, which can lead to charging and power losses. Invest in cable management tools that guarantee the charging cables and connectors, keeping them off the floor and controlling cable damage and clutter.
If you are a lead-acid battery user, it is also essential to consider whether you will require chargers that support lithium-ion technology in the future. There are chargers known on the market that can be configured to assess lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries.
Install battery best practices
Installing battery best practices involves adhering to standardized procedures as you grow and add to your fleet. For example, in conventional charging applications, implementing a first-in-first-out (FIFO) rotation is fundamental. This will enable you to avoid common issues like frequent change-outs, as well as get your battery room in order and establish a method for charging batteries. It can be as simple as a log-in sheet or a designated process to “always take the battery on the left.” There are also chargers and battery managing systems available to assist operators in choosing the right battery or knowing when they’ve made the wrong pick.
Constant watering and equalizing charging are two common most promising practices. Equalized charging increases the charge of the cells in the battery to equal voltage. Cells with different voltages force certain cells to work harder and degrade faster, leading to the battery failing capacity over time. Equalize charging should happen once a week, with reasonable time given so the battery can cool down. There are wise chargers available that permit you to set a time and date for it to happen automatically. A possible most suitable practice might be to balance charges on Saturday, cool batteries on Sunda,y, and water the first item on Monday before the forklift is operated.
Another typical issue that should be addressed occurs when a battery’s cool-down period is too quick. After you achieve a full charge on a battery, it requires time to cool down before discharging begins. Improved battery temperature while discharging can communicate to cables and connectors, which can result in faster degradation or whole failure. Unless you are employing“opportunity” charging — a short span of charging through the day — lead-acid batteries ideally need 8 hours to cool down before discharging.
Continually revisit your battery system
Finally, your battery strategy should never be fixed. It should evolve and change along with your functional needs and forklift fleet. You are required to continually monitor and comprehend your fleet, and plan accordingly to ensure that its current and future power requirements are met. Armed with this knowledge, you can make knowledgeable decisions about the number and kind of batteries you need, as well as potential enhancements to your charging infrastructure.
For many forklift fleet leaders, batteries can be one of the most challenging elements to manage and understand. However, recent advancements in data analytics and monitoring technologies are delivering new opportunities to strengthen battery management schedules by removing the guesswork from the procedure, allowing you to take a holistic and strategic path to battery performance amid efforts to improve productivity.
