Meritor & Konecranes hustle to meet production startup deadline

Unexpected delays

Our customer, Meritor, has a 10-ton overhead crane with two hoists. One of the hoists started making more noise than usual, so we recommended a gear case inspection. Since the customer runs a continuous operation, we have limited time for inspections and repairs.

We were given a small window of time during their Christmas shutdown from December 18 to January 1. We performed non-destructive testing on the gears and found cracks under the surface of the gear tooth—a defect called “spalling.”

We needed to replace the gears, but that would take eight-12 weeks if we ordered them from the OEM. We looked into several vendors, but they would only cut the time down to six-eight weeks. Without this hoist in working order, the plant’s production would shut down.

Race to the finish

I called a sales manager at our plant in Springfield, Ohio and explained that I needed a hoist assembled, shipped and delivered in less than a week. He found a hoist that would work for the customer’s application and the hoist was sent to the customer site. The new CXT hoist was installed two days before production started.

To make sure that we don’t get down to the wire like this again, we have ordered new gears for the other hoist as a backup, in case we find the same issue when we inspect that gear case.

The customer is thrilled that we worked hard to meet their deadline. Not only did it only help with our customer relations—it made me feel great that we could avoid additional downtime!

Through quick thinking and persistence, Konecranes supplied a new hoist to a customer—which potentially saved the customer six weeks of lost production time.