Customer story
TRUCONNECT Remote Monitoring delivers results for Kalida Manufacturing
A subsidiary of KTH Parts Industries, Inc., Kalida Manufacturing is a tier-one supplier to major automotive OEMs. The 460,000-square-foot Kalida plant, which stamps and welds automotive frame components, is one of four KTH facilities in North America.
Overworked crane
Kalida Manufacturing suspected that a 10-ton overhead crane used to change stamping dies was being used beyond its duty classification. About every other month the hoist motor required rewinding and the hoist brake had to be replaced. Eventually the company decided to replace the crane and buy an additional new 10-ton crane from Konecranes, Kalida crane service provider for five years.
Josh Stover of the Konecranes Springfield, Ohio, branch, said the cranes both included a complimentary six-month subscription to TRUCONNECT Remote Monitoring, which enables crane users to keep realtime tabs on how they use their cranes.
Trial run with TRUCONNECT
Kalida Manufacturing took advantage of the TRUCONNECT Remote Monitoring trial and reviewed usage data recorded by the program. The data indicated that the cranes each made four emergency stops per day and more than 20,000 hoist motor starts per week. This meant that the hoist motors cycled from start or changed speed 167 times an hour.
Stover reviewed the data with Kalida Manufacturing, providing advice on how to protect and extend the life of the new cranes. Through the TRUCONNECT data they discovered that their crane operators were improperly using speed controls, putting added stress on the equipment. Stover advised them that each emergency stop burdens the brake 50 times more than normal braking. And each start stresses the hoist brake, contactors, pendant buttons and hoist motor.
Sold on TRUCONNECT
As a result of this review, Kalida Manufacturing provided operator training. Since this training, starts have fallen by more than 10,000 a month and emergency stops have dropped from 20 to fewer than five per week. Kalida Manufacturing aims to continue lowering these numbers. And, seeing the value of monitoring crane usage, the company has paid to continue the TRUCONNECT subscription.
