Making a difference

All businesses seek to achieve a competitive advantage by differentiating their product or service offering. In certain industries this can be secured through marketing driven initiatives that are nothing more than ‘smoke and mirrors’. Thankfully, when it comes to the arena of cranes and lifting equipment, for safety reasons alone, differentiation initiatives demand full transparency and are based on hard evidence and facts.

It is here that we take an in-depth look at the field of consultation services. Indeed given the future strategic importance that is deemed to exist within this arena, world leading lifting equipment manufacturer, Konecranes, has a dedicated UK consultancy service manager to help fully implement the service offering.

By definition, many of the individual elements that fall within consultation services are not new and have been employed within the lifting industry for many years. What has changed though, is the power of the technology that the likes of Konecranes has developed to deliver the analysis, inspections and studies involved. With technology comes not just speed and greater accuracy, but a service providers ability to deliver a more cost-effective solution in the process.

In essence it’s a win-win situation, as the scope that consultation services can provide is effective in answering the key concerns that any crane owner has. Broadly speaking these are:

• What is the crane’s current condition and remaining life expectancy?

• How can cranes be improved from a safety and productivity standpoint?

• Can they be modified to accommodate increased production, greater capacity and increased load?

• What maintenance and modernisation investment is likely to be required in the future?

• Is maintenance and modernisation investment being optimised?

• Is it possible to prevent maintenance costs rising or reduce them?

In seeking to deliver answers that can be used to create and implement future planning mechanisms based on informed decisions, organisations carrying out the consultation process have at their disposal an array of tools that are effective at looking at areas such as lifetime and geometric analysis, maintenance and working conditions, and critical and structural component monitoring.

Crane Reliability Study

Central to the whole process is a Crane Reliability Study or CRS that serves to provide a deep insight into the condition, safety and efficiency of all types of overhead and port cranes.

Such studies provide an exhaustive analysis and comprehensive report for all makes and models of overhead cranes and lifting equipment, outlining its condition and current operating capacity. In addition, a CRS report encompasses recommendations as to future actions that might be required to maximise the use of equipment, thereby enhancing safety, improving performance and increasing reliability.

At its heart, CRS uses advanced methods to provide a dependable technology roadmap to guide customers through improving equipment performance and reliability. Knowing what specific repairs, upgrades, and modernisations are needed in advance allows a long-term modernisation schedule to be created, resulting in maximum productivity, whilst helping minimise downtime. Also brought into the frame are not just technology based processes, but in-depth visual inspections, interviews with operatives, production and maintenance engineers, and a detailed analysis of historical maintenance and inspection information. 

3D mapping

Driving the efficiency with which such decision making is based is an additional raft of consultation products that are also beginning to make their presence felt, alongside the likes of 3D mapping of gantry rails, bridge runway and crane geometric surveys. Design life analysis compares actual usage to a crane’s design limits based on the work cycles of its structures, running hours of proprietary machineries and a particular use. 

Hook analysis seeks to estimate remaining life expectancy – based on condition and duty analysis – as unexpected failure of the hook and block assembly presents a huge safety risk.

Rope analysis not only draws on the consultation providers knowledge of their composition and behaviour but calculation software that can be used to evaluate lifetime concerns, component failures, behavioural trends, rope selection and accident investigations. 

Steel structure analysis differs from design life analysis in that it models the actual structure of the crane regardless of its design principles. Here the actual structure is simulated according to actual usage and loading history using fatigue calculation principles of EN-standard.

Gear case analysis is fast becoming a proactive rather than reactive process and again one that this is being galvanised by the technology now accessible to assist with gearbox condition monitoring. Whereas problem solving in the past has centred on audible, visual and temperature changes occurring, acoustic emission, vibration analysis and thermal imaging equipment is now ensuring that operators receive maximum pre-warning ahead of potential failure occurring.   

Consultation Services are already proving a big hit with cross sector industry leaders and for very good reason. And while it remains the intention of providers such as Konecranes to sing their praises from the rooftops, the results that the process is proven to deliver on is set to continue doing all the talking that is needed.