How Equipment Depot is retiring paper SDS binders across 51 locations with SDS Manager
The material handling company kept safety binders in every branch across 23 states and in every technician’s van. Now a QR code replaces them all.
- Industry
- Material handling: sales, service, rental & warehouse services
- Location
- 51 locations across 23 U.S. states
- Scale
- ~2,000 employees
- Features used
- QR code access · SDS library · Location libraries
- 51Locations moving off paper binders
- 23States covered by one SDS system
- 2,000Employees, from branches to service vans
- 5/5Customer rating
We can get rid of the books, which take quite a bit of time to put together and update — they are in every location and in the technicians’ vans.
Equipment Depot sells, services and rents material handling equipment across the United States; roughly 2,000 employees work out of 51 locations in 23 states, plus a fleet of technicians on the road every day. For Lori Pavlichek, the company’s EHS Specialist, chemical safety documentation lived in paper binders: one in every branch and one in every van.
Binders on that scale have a way of falling behind. Assembling them takes time, updating them takes more, and a manual that isn’t current isn’t doing its job. Here is what changed.
The challenge
- 1Paper manuals weren’t always up to date
- 2Managing them across 51 locations in 23 states was difficult
- 3Every branch and every technician’s van needed its own book assembled and maintained by hand
The solution: a QR code instead of a binder
One scan gives any employee, at any branch or in any van, the current SDS library without any assembly.
Binders out, QR codes in
Lori’s favorite feature is the QR code. Posted where the binder used to sit, one scan opens the location’s current SDS library on any phone — always the latest version, never a page to swap.
Every branch, every van
The hardest binders to keep current were the ones on wheels. With the library online, a technician in the field has the same up-to-date access as the front desk at headquarters — across all 51 locations and 23 states.
Freed-up hands
The people once responsible for keeping binders current now spend that time on other areas of responsibility. The maintenance burden didn’t shrink — it disappeared.
The result: every location current, no books to build
Equipment Depot is early in its rollout, and the binder era is already ending.
- Time saved no more assembling and updating books for every location and every van
- Efficiency staff who maintained the binders now work in other areas of responsibility
- Compliance asked where SDS Manager supports compliance most, Lori’s answer was “All of it!”
- Access one QR scan replaces the binder at every branch and in every van
