Safety Factor: How To Make Your Overhead Crane Safer

Intro

(upbeat rock music playing)

– [Announcer] For your own safety, you are reminded to stand behind the yellow line. (upbeat rock music playing)

– [Ben Hengst] Welcome to the first official episode of Safety Factor. My name is Ben Hengst and I’ll be sitting in the cab here and guiding this thing along. This is a podcast where we’re going to be talking a lot about how you can stay safe while you’re doing your job. Or how you can keep your employees safe while they do their jobs. In this first episode, we’re talking about overhead cranes. Specifically, we are talking about creating safer work zones with smart non-contact measurement solutions. I’m here with Steve Lubeck, president of Laser-View Technologies. Mark Shubel, Director of Business & Training Development for Crane Service from Mazzella. And Kenny Wright, VP of Process Cranes and Modernizations for Mazzella as well. Guys, thanks for being here to help kick this thing off. Steven, could you quickly tell us, for those who don’t know, what are smart non-contact measurement solutions and can you tell us a bit about what Laser View Technologies does in the field?

What are Smart Non-Contact Measurement Solutions?

– [Steven Lubeck] Yeah, sure, thanks. So basically non-contact solutions are any sort of solutions for cranes that do not deal with contact sensors. Sensors such as limit switches and paddles and things like that. So the smarter non-contact solutions use sensors such as laser sensors and other non-contact sensors with smart controls to be able to enhance and modernize what a crane does and make it safer than just the basic operation it was initially intended for.

What does Laser-View Technologies do?

So laser view in general does work on the overhead cranes for collision detection, no fly zoning and hoist safety. However, we also, before dealing with cranes, really started with automation in general. Providing the automation industry with non-contact lasers and other kinds of sensors such as that. And we eventually got into the crane market several years ago and I have made a presence in the overhead crane market.

– [Ben Hengst] All right. Thanks Steven. Mark and Kenny, can you tell us a bit about your background and your experience in the field?

Who is Mark Shubel?

– [Mark Shubel] Sure. I’m Mark Shubel. I’m the director of business development and technical training at the Mazzella companies and I’ve been involved with skilled trades, engineering and service management for the last 47 years, and specifically overhead cranes in general for the last 35 years. And I’ve been with Mazzella companies for about the last 10 years. My background is mechanical and structural, although I have a smattering of all the other different skilled trades training also.

Who is Kenny Wright?

– [Kenny Wright] So I’ve been in the overhead crane business for almost 30 years now. My background is electrical electronics. I have a degree in both. And I got into the crane world because of Mr. Mark Shubel here. And it wasn’t that I was actually out seeking to become a crane guy, but had the experience and met up with Mark and here we are today. So it’s all his fault. (Ben chuckles) My experience with Mazzella and with our own company is crane service. Moved over to the engineered product side of the business to run the engineered product side with modernizations, process equipment and engineered cranes. And we’ve now been running this division for about four years.

– [Ben Hengst] So we’ve got a lot of years here collectively to fall back on. So why are we talking about creating safer work zones now? Was this a concern 10 to 20 years ago?

What was crane safety like in the past?

– [Mark Shubel] This has been an issue for the overhead crane business, I’m assuming since cranes came into use, you know, literally a thousand years ago. And just in our lifetime, you know, it’s gone through a lot of different progressions to come up with safe work zones. And what Steve’s working on now is a current, you know, leading technology. But basically it started out with simple things like graphics mounted to overhead, crane girders and the runway systems to warn the operators that they were in an area where the hoist trolley would or could impact a piece of equipment underneath it. That kind of thing. That moved into the next level, which was electromechanical limit switches and proximity switches used in conjunction with relay logic controllers that were mounted on the crane girders to tell the crane basically where it was, or the hoist trolley, where it was on the crane itself. So it can either slow down or stop moving in certain areas. That kind of progressed into motor encoders and relay logic to determine for size positioning of the crane and the hoist trolley, through the encoders. That kind of moved into photo electric sensors and photo eyes with large targets in essence. Which basically they emitted the light and reflected off of the target and it was reflected back to the emitter, if you will, to determine whether or not it was within range. Now we’ve gotten to the point where we’re at now, which is with the laser driven non-contact measurement solutions that Steve’s companies offer. A lot of what we do in the crane and hoist business, not just from a manufacturing standpoint, but from a service standpoint, is we act as not only innovators to bring new stuff into the market, but also integrators. So Steve’s point earlier about this coming from the automation background and then, you know, himself and a lot of other companies like us have basically worked to try to integrate those technologies into the overhead crane business as they become more affordable and user friendly, if you will.

What is crane safety like today?

– [Ben Hengst] Is there more emphasis on safety now than there was in the past?

– [Mark Shubel] Absolutely. There’s a tremendous amount of emphasis now. As you guys probably know, OSHA was starting up in the early 1970s and it was basically just to monitor worker safety in certain industries. And it’s become very, I guess, widespread now to the point that safety is a major factor in a lot of what the plants, our end users do, and certainly is a big driving part of what we do in our business at overhead cranes and overhead crane service. So yes, safety’s become very important in our industry.

– [Steven Lubeck] You know, the thing that I hear a lot when I go into production plants, especially like stamping plants for example, is that the level of employees has changed at a point that there’s not as much care in the every movement that they make. And that’s why no fly zones have become somewhat of a more popular request now because people are more distracted. There’s more distractions with cell phones and all that. And now you have other things that are distracting you and you are not paying attention to the loads on a crane as much and no fly zones have become more popular. We have customers who’ve had buildings with offices in under the crane runway and they’ve been there for 20 years and all of a sudden now someone runs into it and runs right through a building. But the building’s been there 20 years and the crane runway has been there 20 years. So people were careful and I guess people have always had accidents, but it seems like this is more on people’s minds as this happens more and more now.

– [Kenny Wright] And one more thing to that is the technology has grown, you know, so just fast, I would say, to where you have devices now that you can put on at a, I’d say an economical price, that people can afford. You think about all the devices that are on a car or a truck these days. When you go buy your truck, you got sensors all the way around it that keep you from backing into somebody, keeps you from getting too close to somebody that you’re following on the roadway. So our generation that we grew up in, we were always doing things the manual way. These days, it seems like the younger generations, you know, they invite that kind of technology to be on everything they use. Every machine, every crane, every thing that they use in the field, they expect it to be on there, just like it is on their car or their vehicle. So the technological advances have put us to where systems that Steve can offer are wanted and invited to be in the field more. 20 years ago they would’ve laughed you out of there because it slows me down.

What are the technical advances making cranes safer?

– [Ben Hengst] So let’s talk about some of the technical advantages, like what is the technology now? Like what are some things that are out there that people might not know about or things that are being developed, things that are exciting to look forward to?

– [Steven Lubeck] So one of the things is that, you know, laser sensors for example, before were limited to range or maybe photo electronics and they were less distance. Well now the lasers that we use in the cranes can go up to a 1600 foot runway. I recently did a commissioning on a thousand foot runway. Measures no problem to a target. So you can now go to a long runway, whether it’s a short run or a long run, but you can do a long runway now, you always know where a crane is in the runway. You never have to guess is it working, is it not working? Am I getting too close? It’s an absolute thing. So what’s changed is now that we have sensors that are more reliable, longer range, more stable, more accurate, we can continuously monitor where that crane is in space. And not just where the overhead crane is, but where the trolley is, where the hoist is. We typically put two lasers on a crane. One looks at the trolley position, the hoist position, the other looks at the bridge position. So now that we know where everything is in space, we always monitor it. There’s never a time that it’s unknown where your crane is. And because of that we can reliably not just stop a collision with another machine or a building, but we can also make sure we slow it in time and then stop it. The other piece of the puzzle is there’s more computing power built into newer PLC controls. So we’re using on most part PLC controls in all systems, not PC controls. And there’s a debate, you know, which is the best in this day and age in 2022? However, PLC controls were run and run and run and they don’t do blue screens of death and all the things that you would have on PCs. So we could run very fast powerful programs, ran through PLC controls, monitor all the sensors, monitor all those elements at once, know where the position is and do outputs to the variable frequency drive of a crane and or wireless outputs to other pieces of machinery, which we haven’t even talked about yet. That may be in that runway, in that crane bay. One other thing, Ben. Is that in addition to the laser technology and the process technology, wireless technology for wireless discrete I/O has gotten a lot better also. So now not only do we have the ability to slow and stop a crane, but we also have to to have the ability to warn other machines, other devices, other cranes even of potential collisions or accidents. So the wireless technology has improved a lot as well. On top of that, we also have the ability now with wifi to be able to set the limits on cranes from the ground. So now we’ve even taken advances from when we’ve started crane century to the point of you have to do all your settings up on the crane, to now you can do it on your phone or your pad or a computer on the ground without ever having to get back on the lift to make that change on the program.

– [Ben Hengst] So that’s a whole other aspect of safety there because now you’re not having to get up in the air, you’re not having to worry about fall protection gear, you’re not having to worry about falling. So that’s an extra form of safety right there.

– [Kenny Wright] It also adds in to the efficiency of the maintenance team that’s, you know, taking care of that piece of machinery. Getting a man lift over to get up on the crane takes time. So that takes time away from production. So it does improve the efficiency and the production guys love that part.

– [Steven Lubeck] It it also opens up the ability now to do remote monitoring. So now that we have that access and now we have the access through ethernet industrial protocols essentially, we quite often, for some larger facilities, do remote access. So we can literally remote into a crane from our office and watch the crane move, loads lift, see what’s going on. And I can tell you, if you have a bad sensor. I can tell you, I can help configure something. We can help make settings. We can help figure out why a zone keeps shutting the crane down because you’re too close. Or you have a slow zone that’s not large enough and you have not had it set properly and you’re flying through the zone because your crane’s too fast. So there’s some things that we can do remotely that really cut down on maintenance costs overall because now you do not have to pay a field service just to come out for a very simple problem.

What is the limit switch mentality?

– [Ben Hengst] So let’s talk about some of the hurdles that you run into in getting people to adapt to this new technology, use this new technology. So can we talk a little bit about the limit switch mentality? So what is the limit switch mentality?

– [Steven Lubeck] To me, the limit switch mentality is, well we can do it with limit switches and I can do it less with limit switches. Well there’s some truth to that but the truth only goes so far. The truth is, is that yes, limit switches themselves are less costly devices, however you must physically mount the limit switch and every time it’s not right, you gotta get on the lift and you gotta move that limit switch over a foot. Limit switches are mechanical. Overhead cranes get a, you know, there’s this dirt and there’s debris on the rail and there’s little metal shavings and there’s just, they’re not maintained. Those limit switches don’t get maintained. So what happens is, that limit switch may flip over. I often call them windmill switches. They’ll flip over and they may never flip back and they can get stuck in position. So windmill switches are a maintenance issue because now they’re mechanical switches that either get damaged, get dirty, don’t flip back and you have to move and to reset them. But a limit switch is not the end of the story. You can have a limit switch, but you still need to lodge it. So if you have one new fly zone and you have a limit switch, you know, that’s one thing. If you have two or three or four or five or up to eight no fly zones with limit switches, you have to have limit switches on your trolley, limit switches on the bridge. You have to have a limit switch for slow down, for stop in each direction. It’s a lot of limit switches, a lot of wiring and still logic you have to do. The ability to take one laser for one direction and one laser for the other direction, have infinite control of where you slow and stop, it’s so much smoother and easier to diagnose in the long run. In terms of the limit switch mentality, the people just think they can do it with limit switches because they’re familiar with on off, on off. And it’s simple to understand. Once they see this, their reaction is, “Oh wow, that’s cool, we don’t need limit switches anymore”. And that’s usually what we get from all this.

– [Kenny Wright] So, and also Steve, one thing to add on the maintenance nightmare with the limits, which is, is that they very seldom stop or slow you down in the same spot every time. A mechanical switch is not accurate at all. And I don’t know that you could even put a percentage on it as to, you know, what that accuracy or lack of accuracy is, but they do not stop you and then slow you down in the same spot every time. And what he was getting at with, if you had all these different zones and you had to have all these different limits, which is, I mean, the piece of machinery no matter what it is, is gonna look like an alien, you know, going down the runway or on the path that it rides on. And then the sequencing, it would be a nightmare. Relay logic has always been easy to follow but when you have all these different limits, which is in all these different locations, how do you keep up with that? How do you create a chart that you can say, well it’s switch number five over there that’s creating a problem for all these other switches. So the limit switch mentality goes back to what I made comment on earlier too. The older generations were “You’re not gonna put anything electronic on my piece of equipment because I don’t know how to work on it”. As the younger generations came along and you know they embrace technology, that limit switch mentality, keep it simple, now to the younger generations is keep it simple and put a piece of electronics on there that I can work with. So it’s just a different thought process altogether.

– [Mark Shubel] Sure. And then to add to that Kenny, is basically the relays themselves. We talked about the limit switches and failures on them, but then every point that Steve made, if you had seven different zones you were working with, you’d have to have relays inside of an enclosure which makes your enclosure larger and then all of the contact relays inside of them which are all highly prone to wear and failure also. So the panels get larger, the wiring gets more complex and there’s more opportunity for failure. Not just in the switch itself but in the relays themselves also. So there’s a lot more maintenance involved, to answer your question, than that kind of a thing that’s maintenance driven. And to Kenny’s earlier point, everybody’s been reluctant to mount anything new on a crane for a couple of reasons. One, they’re not familiar with it. And two, if it adds complexity or maintenance to the crane, is it worth it?

What are the hurtles in getting crane users to adapt to new technology?

– [Ben Hengst] So Steven, what are some of the hurdles that you’re seeing to get people to adapt to this new technology?

– [Steven Lubeck] I think part of the hurdles is kind of what Mark just mentioned. People are a little leery of putting lasers on the crane. They’re, “Oh, they’re gonna get dirty, they need cleaning”. Well lasers now, all lasers in particular, can handle a good bit of dirt. But that doesn’t preclude that you don’t have maintenance, that you clean things, eventually. You have to inspect a crane and put it as part of your procedure. Operators kind of feel like if you put no fly zone systems on this, that means you’re not trusting me to control this crane. And what they don’t realize is that it’s also because it helps them, they’re still in control of their crane. It helps them have better control of their crane. Because now what happens is, they can concentrate on where they’re moving their material, as opposed to where am I moving my material and oops, am I too close? Am I gonna hit this object? So they can concentrate on doing their job more efficiently and less worrying about the hazards of what they have to hit. So once you show the operators how seamlessly it works, that hurdle goes away. But initially they see it as you are just limiting what I can do and now I’m not gonna be able to do my job. So from the operator’s stand point, that’s a hurdle. From the maintenance standpoint, they think it’s more there and they don’t know what happens and they say, “Well how can I jump her? How can I override it?” And we explain to them that we have procedures in there to override it electronically if there’s a problem. The other thing that we do to help with this hurdle is that we have indicators, visual indicators, that show the directions that are enabled and disabled. And you don’t get that with old school technologies. So what you see shows you’re enabled. Well if your crane can’t go forward, but my controls say they should be going forward, then you know where to look. You know to look either at the drive or a relay in between the drives. But you at least know that the controls say it’s supposed to be going forward and that you have a live laser reading. All that is good. You can start to pinpoint where to start looking. And by telling people these things, they tend to get over the hurdles.

How can you overcome resistance to new technology?

– [Kenny Wright] With any particular plant that we go to, you’re always gonna have, you know, a few operators that no matter what you do, they’re not gonna like it. They’re accustomed to this piece of machinery running a particular way. 90% of the people that oppose everything that we do, Steve, at some point do come on board and say, “Yeah, I can see what you’re getting at. This is gonna make my job safer and easier and it’s not really gonna hold me back in what I need to do”. So those that are hesitant, they usually do come around. There’s maybe one out of 10 at any place you go to that no matter what you do, they’re not gonna like it.

– [Mark Shubel] And anytime we have change, which all of us know, change is new and people are reluctant to change for the most part. But it all comes down to change management also and how we talk to the customers, when we’re frank presenting stuff like this. And when we talk to the operators specifically, and Kenny and Steve do a great job with that, to try to explain to them how this is gonna be more efficient and safer for them also. So really when we talk to customers, to Kenny’s point, we have to talk to them not only about what we’re presenting, but how it affects them and the operators. And we need to, and always do, get operators involved in these types of things and then walk them through a training program once we do a retrofit or a modernization. And again Steve and Kenny do a phenomenal job with that. But it all comes down to again, change management and people are somewhat reluctant to change. So what you try to do is mitigate as much of that, those objections if you will, by covering topics that will make it clear to the individuals that you’re talking to. So for instance, if you’re talking to the production people, you talk about the efficiency. If you’re talking to the operator, it might be his safety and, you know, making sure he gets home at the end of the day and can handle complex lifts that always made him a little uneasy because he didn’t have the control of the crane or position on the crane that he has now. So there’s a lot of different ways to present it.

– [Steven Lubeck] I have found after we’ve done installs and commissionings, if we spend time after the fact working with the operators and answering their questions, it goes a long way. As opposed to leaving it to the plant management to do that. And once they start asking the people who have put it in questions and they talk to them, they tend to accept them more. So that goes along with what Mark was saying.

How to contact Steven Lubeck and Laser-View Technologies

– [Ben Hengst] Thanks guys for coming up to Safety Factor. So Steven, how can people get ahold of you? How can they find you?

– [Steven Lubeck] They can always contact us at our info account, it’s info@laser-view.com and anyone can reach out to me directly as well. And I could talk about any application that anyone has. Be more than happy to talk about exactly how we work and ways we can make solutions work and ways we can make it work with Mazzella, as our partner in this business as well.

– [Ben Hengst] Thanks Steve. Check out Laser View Technologies and you can get ahold of myself, Mark, Kenny, or any of our other experts at mazzellacompanies.com Don’t forget to pop into our learning center. We have a ton of information on overhead cranes there. We’ll be back monthly with Safety Factor. And this is part one of a three-part series on creating a safer and more efficient work zone with smart non-contact measurement solutions. Next time we meet with Steve, we are going to talk about how they can improve your efficiency. You can subscribe to wherever you listen to your podcasts or you can watch it on the Lifting & Rigging channel on YouTube. Thanks for listening and stay safe out there. (upbeat rock music playing)