For over 30 years, Robway has developed and manufactured a range of safe load indicators and line-tension monitoring equipment for all types of cranes and heavy lifting equipment.
As the crane and associated industries continually strive for increased productivity, safety and preventative maintenance programs, Robway’s highly accurate overload monitoring systems continue to lead the way.
“Robway has been around for several decades and there are lot of people who know us for our Rated Capacity Indicator (RCI) product range,” Jon Koval, OEM Sales Manager, said. “Today, our capabilities are far greater than what we advertise and in many cases what we are known for. Many are surprised to hear we do full hydraulics controls, highway instrument panels and video as well as RCI capabilities. We tend to spend more time on the technology than we do on advertising our technology,” he said.
Robway was founded in 1977 and was an early innovator in electronic load monitoring systems. Today, Robway continues in that vein by looking beyond what may be mandated or expected as best-practice in load monitoring systems.
“Robway’s corporate vision is safety and the products and systems we provide relate to increasing safety in one way or another,” Koval said. “For decades we have provided load monitoring and limiter systems. These systems historically were retrofitted to cranes and operate autonomously to stop crane movements in dangerous directions. In many cases resourceful crane operators would find ways to defeat safety measures because “they get in the way of getting the job done. Our design philosophy is to not try to stop an operator from getting the job done, but to help them get the job done safely,” he said.
“Safety can be increased in other ways such as operator awareness of his surroundings and wind monitoring. By introducing camera systems and wind monitoring systems into our product range we increase safety by providing crane operators with visual awareness of their surroundings and also awareness of wind conditions, which impacts the loading of the cranes. With these additional monitoring capabilities comes additional demand for space in crane cabins. Robway has been integrating functionality and thus reducing electronics, wiring, and multiple operator displays. For example our largest 12” crane monitor is capable of displaying crane load data, crane controls, engine and transmission data, video data, and wind data concurrently.
“These integrated crane systems still operate autonomously, however safe crane operation is not just the responsibility of the crane operator. Responsibility extends to site supervisors, construction site managers, and crane owners. Robway has offered remote crane monitoring telematics since 2006, which remotely retrieves and stores all crane movements on our Elog server from which email and SMS alerts are sent to supervisors. The crane data is also available via an internet login for incident investigation. This has been proven to modify operator behaviour and subsequently increasing personnel safety as well as reducing wear and
tear to the crane.
“The physical condition of the crane is also an important safety issue. Robway’s newest product range maintains a complete black box data log as well as crane lift and winch histories. Today, Robway is building on this capability by developing online analysis tools to simplify data presentation and analysis. Our goal is to provide all crane information and data analysis to someone’s desktop in near real-time. Along with this development we are also increasing
remote diagnostics capabilities in the interest of quickly diagnosing crane faults and restoring crane operation quickly with minimal downtime,” Koval said.