New cranes a smarter way to lift for automotive manufacturer

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.

SMARTON cranes offer increased safety and productivity

For the Douai plant, we supplied a SMARTON 34 T, M8 classification open winch crane with the Slack Rope Prevention Smart 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 Smart Feature at the Sandouville site. This uses telemetry lasers to restrict crane movement to assigned three-dimensional spaces, helping to minimize safety risks to personnel and damage to the office access footbridge.

The operators at Sandouville make full use of the Target Positioning Smart Feature to position the coils above the machines and automatically return to the trucks to pick up more coils.

Modern adaptability makes adding features easy

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.

Learn more about SMARTON cranes