Mike James - Vice President and General Manager of Industrial Cranes
Chief among Konecranes contributions to crane technology is SMARTON®. SMARTON is a module-based system of crane technology that provides customers great flexibility in adapting their equipment to the evolving needs of their operations.
Through SMARTON, Konecranes works with customers to configure lifting equipment built according to their specific requirements. SMARTON modules can be added later as a customer’s needs change.
Not every application requires a “smart” crane, but cranes last a long time. Crane applications and use typically change over time. As these changes occur a customer can re-visit the available features to improve their operation.
SMARTON helps businesses spread out the costs of new equipment, because it allows them to add modules for specific operational processes as they are needed and as financial resources allow.
What are some of these Smart Features?
- Sway Control
- Automatic positioning /load locating – In the past this was expensive automation
- ZONE control / restricted zone operation – again in the past this was expensive automation
- Multiple hoist and complete crane synchronization
- Multiple load limits coordinated to zone control
- Hoist speeds “tuned” to load size – adaptive and extended hoist speed ranges
In addition to the above, remote monitoring and diagnostics are just a couple more of the many features available in SMARTON modules.
SMARTON offers customers the advantage of quick response for maintenance needs and makes it easy for technicians to quickly identify the cause of problems. The SMARTON service panel is designed to help technicians quickly get to the source of the problem.
The latest advance for high production, repetitive motion cranes is energy-saving capabilities. With SMARTON regenerative braking, energy trapped from lowering loads (gravity) and inertia from the slowing crane structure is engineered to return to the power grid as regenerated electricity, reducing energy consumption and costs by up to a third. In a conventional crane this energy is burned up as heat mainly through resistors.
SMARTON cranes, and the exceptional advantages they provide, continue to demonstrate why crane technology matters.
Related resource
TRUCONNECT usage data is viewable on our cloud-based customer portal –
yourKONECRANES.com. If you have a maintenance agreement with us, your maintenance data and asset details from MAINMAN are also available on the portal, giving you a transparent view of events and activities over any selected time interval.
Better visibility into the use and performance of overhead cranes
The Industrial Internet – the integration of machines with network sensors and software to gather and analyze data for specific purposes – promises to help make equipment across industries more intelligent and enable efficiencies that were unimaginable just a short time ago.
