A manufacturer of engineered plastic components was running into problems when fabricating bed liners for dump trucks. The liners were made of three separate plastic panels, which were welded together and formed into rolls. The panels, each weighing 350 lb on average, are 4 ft wide by 10 ft or sometimes 20 ft long. The size and weight made the panels awkward to lift, and often required multiple workers to move.
"We were doing things that weren't good from a safety and ergonomics standpoint," said Jerry, the plant's maintenance and safety supervisor. "We were using multiple people to manhandle these large panels of plastic on and off machines, conveyors, rolling conveyor tables, things like that."
"We would use vice grips to try and hold them, but the material is designed to slip, so gripping it was very difficult," said Joe, a welder in the affected work area. "Moving them would take two guys, one on each end -- and occasionally a third and fourth guy if we were having trouble."
Bridge Crane to the Rescue
The company purchased a 1,000 lb capacity Gorbel workstation bridge crane with 40 ft runways and an 18 ft bridge. The bridge was motorized with Gorbel tractor drives, and a vacuum device was used to grip and lift the panels. All movement of the bridge and vacuum was controlled wirelessly by radio.
With the Gorbel system in place, the fabrication process is now much safer, with very limited contact of the panels required by the workers. Now that the job can be done effectively by one person, the company has also been able to reallocate its labor to other areas of the facility.
"The Gorbel system fixed all of our problems," said the maintenance and safety supervisor. "It fixes the ergonomic problems, the safety problems, as well as speeds up efficiency. We can get the job done faster with less people. The cranes are very reliable too -- with some basic preventative maintenance, they have been virtually trouble free."
Not every worker was quick to use the Gorbel system, but it didn't take long for the crane to make a believer out of all employees.
"When they installed the workstation crane, I was probably one of the only people against it," said Joe. "But everyone kept telling me they like it and it was easy to use, so I finally used it. It's a really nice system and I like it a lot. I'll probably be the first guy to try whatever goes in now."
