The UK automotive industry is in the midst of a period of strong growth. Last year, car production surpassed a record high set in 1999, with British plants making more than 1.7 million, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
Vehicle manufacturing continues to be a major user of lifting equipment. Companies providing cranes and materials-handling equipment help automotive manufacturers to maintain their demanding production schedules.
With the continued rise in production, and production complexity, the need to focus on safety with regard to making vehicles has increased as well. Eighteen months ago Jaguar Land Rover was ordered to pay a £30,000 fine after a worker was crushed to death at the Halewood plant after getting caught between two 24-tonne dies, as he prepared to lift one with an overhead crane. This is not the only recent incident involving heavy lifting equipment.
Chris Lindley-Smith, sales director of Street Crane, says: “There have been a number of accidents where employees have been killed through crushing injuries where a crane has been used to lift a steel die, which may weigh 30 tonnes, off the floor and they haven’t ensured the lifting cable is properly vertical before doing so. And what’s happened is that as soon as the die left the floor the product has swung to one side and if there’s something behind them they’ll be crushed.”
Crane manufacturers are experiencing a surge in demand from automotive companies insisting that equipment is installed onto the cranes to prevent this from happening. Lindley-Smith says: “Historically, crane users have been more than happy to take on the responsibility for safety themselves, having the operators properly trained and proper procedures in place for product handling and standard operating procedures. In addition, they now want additional safety and interlock controls on the lifting equipment to ensure that their operators follow procedures.”
To prevent the crane from swinging, anti-side-pull devices can be used. If an operator tries to lift a load and the hook is at an angle, then the load will swing. Technology is now available that stops the hoist operating if it detects that the hook or load isn’t purely vertical.
The automotive industry is increasingly adding safeguarding measures to all kinds of equipment to prevent accidents, explains Lindley-Smith: “It’s nothing to do with the design standards of our equipment, it’s the approved codes of practice that make people scared. Fear of prosecution, that’s what is driving it.
“All the design standards we work to ensure that the cranes are intrinsically safe. There’s a responsibility for a crane manufacturer to make sure the crane is safe but there is also a responsibility for the operator to make sure they are using it in a safe manner. We are seeing these extra controls which make it harder for the operator to use the crane dangerously. They want us to safeguard them in every eventuality, which is impossible.
“If you buy a car, the manufacturer makes it as safe as possible, but it’s not stopping you driving it dangerously. It’s exactly the same concept. If you crash your car into a lamp-post you can’t go back to the manufacturer and say ‘ah well, you didn’t make this car miss lamp-posts!’ – of course they can’t.”
Lindley-Smith explains that the latest health and safety legislation requires operators to know that a crane is safe to use, and that it is being operated within its safe working period (SWP).
“The equipment used has to be safe and fit for purpose,” says Lindley-Smith. “An overhead crane or any hoist has a design life. All manufacturers of equipment like ours must fit an hours-in-service meter. The meter only tells you how many hours the crane has been working and not what it lifted. If you have a 10-tonne crane and it has spent all of its life only lifting half a tonne, that’s the equivalent of a car that has only been driven at 40mph. You could have the same crane but every lift has been 9.7 tonnes, so up to its capacity, and that’s like buying a car that has been driven by a boy racer all over town.”
The automotive industry is seeking more information about how cranes are being used. Although the use of load monitors is not yet legislated for in the UK – it is in Australia – Lindley-Smith says demand for them is increasing.
“Our customers are saying that they know how long the equipment has been in service, but now they want to know what it has been doing,” says Lindley-Smith. “But we are now starting to provide SWP monitors to customers that request them so they have that record. It tells them how much of the design life a crane has used up in any one time.
“If a vehicle manufacturer has an accident, say a crane drops a load and there’s an HSE investigation, they can point to the crane and say that the SWP monitor shows that it has only used 50% of its design life, so it’s not a worn-out machine. But if the SWP shows that the crane has done five times its design life and they’ve done nothing about it then they have a problem.
“It isn’t good enough to say they couldn’t afford to replace the crane. This is crucial as it ensures that the heavy-lift cranes being used are still safe.”
Advances in technology are leading to new equipment that prevents any dangerous lifting. For example, Street Crane’s Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) technology now comes as standard on many systems. VFD drives provide a fully programmable solution, allowing the end user to adjust crane speeds to suit the application. Controlled acceleration and deceleration times minimise load swing. VFDs can also be integrated with anti-sway, software providing a high level of load control and virtually eliminating load swing.
Another manufacturer, Konecranes, says that smart features are increasingly available for crane operations. As well as sway control, a major development is in the industrial internet. For Konecranes this means what could be called the “intelligent” crane, fitted with detectors and instruments that can be monitored for use and wear, and even be connected for diagnosis of problems and breakdowns.
Konecranes’ system, Truconnect Remote Services, can collect information on use of cranes, which allows better maintenance decisions and pre-emptive part replacement to reduce downtime.
A study by the International Monetary Fund has suggested that by 2030 the automotive industry will see a sharp increase in the proportion of employees who are older than 55. These workers will have more experience, but they will also be less able to cope with physical effort. Many automotive manufacturers have identified these trends, and have decided that it’s best to keep good workers on the job as long as possible by adapting factories to their needs.
“We have to relieve the physical burden for people that are continuing to work later in life,” says Lindley-Smith.
As a result, the use of semi-automation in heavy lifting equipment is also rising. Although automatic storage and retrieval has existed for some time, the automotive industry is starting to ask for semi-automatic applications on standard cranes. This technology enables the crane to automatically travel to the right area before the operator lowers it under manual control. “It’s probably going to save time, but it’s to save operator fatigue as well,” says Lindley-Smith.