Renault Car Corporation, Douai and Sandouville, France
At facilities in Douai and Sandouville, Renault manufactures pressed parts for the bodies of the vehicles they assemble. In these two factories, a crane unloads coils of steel from trucks or wagons, and then picks up the coils again to supply the stamping presses. The cranes at both plants were aging, and they required a great deal of corrective maintenance.
Adding SMARTON® Cranes
For the Douai plant, Konecranes supplied a SMARTON 34 T, M8 classification crane with the Slack Rope Prevention feature and an operator cabin to minimize personnel hazards.
Because of the layout of the Sandouville plant, Renault wanted to prevent the crane from passing over certain areas for the safety of the personnel and to prevent damage to the machines. To improve output at the workshop, the project manager wanted a positioning feature to supply the machines more quickly.
We installed a SMARTON 34 T M8 crane with the Protected Areas feature at the Sandouville site. This uses telemetry lasers to restrict crane movement to assigned three-dimensional spaces, helping to prevent personnel safety risks and damage to the office access footbridge.
The operators at Sandouville make full use of the Target Positioning feature to position the coils above the machines and automatically return to the trucks to pick up more coils.
Modern Adaptability
Renault’s new SMARTON cranes are well suited for the coil handling operations at Douai and Sandouville. And SMARTON is individually configured so it will be easy to add new Smart Features when needed.
