Tata Steel’s Feijen Service Centre in Maastricht, Netherlands, needed to replace its heavy-duty coil crane which had reached its end of life. Top priorities during the bidding process were quality of concept and manufacture, and the company was looking for “a supplier willing to go the extra mile.”
The Feijen Service Centre processes steel coils to produce high-quality flat sheets for manufacturers and traders in multiple industries. At the facility’s dock on the Meuse River in Maastricht, coils are loaded and unloaded using a 43-tonne overhead crane in a busy 24-hour schedule, five days a week. The crane reached the end of the road recently after serving for 40 years. “The machine had done its duty,” confirms the facility’s Technical Purchase Manager Laurens Smit. “It had become increasingly unreliable and maintenance costs were expected to skyrocket, so we decided it was high time to find a replacement.”
In addition to this main crane, two smaller 4-tonne cranes had to be installed. For all of them, Smit and his colleagues had a good idea what they wanted. “State-of-the-art technology was a must, including frequency-controlled drives and RF control. You can have that from any supplier today. But the typical standard crane would never do for us, because at Tata Steel we tend to set above-average requirements for safety and ergonomics. For example, we like our handrails to be raised near steps. And we want critical parts to be very easily accessible for maintenance purposes.”
Small manufacturing details can have a huge impact on equipment useful lifetime and total cost of ownership
Put simply, Smit wanted a crane manufacturer willing to discuss and optimize the design details of this business-critical coil crane. “They need to think with us, be willing to reconsider initial design decisions and find alternatives that better suit our needs. That was the main reason we hired TCS for the job, because we know they go that extra mile.”
Another reason was quality of manufacture. Laurens Smit: “I have enough experience with heavy-duty equipment to understand the importance of manufacturing detail. I very much appreciate manufacturers who take great care with chamfering and deburring, and with finishing. These small details can have a significant impact on the crane’s useful lifetime and total cost of ownership.”
Inspired by this story?
