On the whole, aerospace has long been a particularly strong performing sector even throughout the global financial crisis. Although segments such as helicopter manufacture may have dipped the global aerospace and defence sector was valued at USD 920 billion in 2010, and grew at 8.7 percent CAGR between 2005 and 2009.
In almost every sector the global financial crisis has since had a significant impact, but prospects for the aerospace sector have managed to look positive for the longest time, with the market predicted to be valued at USD 1,190 billion by the end of 2014.
This is on the back of positive GDP growth, rising incomes, improving health of airlines and underpinned by the large order backlog of both Boeing and EADS.
For instance in the UK, the aerospace market is estimated to generate GBP 20bn of sales per annum and provides 250,000 jobs with world-class companies such as BAE Systems and Rolls Royce, but also a whole raft of high quality businesses supplying and supporting this market.
Aerospace cranes are typically not high usage cranes, so the upgrades are often required to incorporate next generation controls in older cranes and take advantage of new technologies.
This is very much driven by a high expected level of safety and the desire to reduce the possibility of dropping a load.
"A lot of the installations that we see are using cranes that are 30 years old, 40 years old," says Jim Andrews, vice president of US firm Wazee Cranes. "They’re in great condition but technologically its 30-year-old technology.
"I think this is somewhat typical within a lot of the aerospace community, is that they’re looking at mitigation as an overall company protocol and because the cranes that they have that are handling critical lifts now are being upgraded with additional enhancements to reduce the possibility of damaging very expensive hardware items.
"The usage hasn’t changed, the application hasn’t changed its just the focus on trying to enhance the overhead material handling so that they can hopefully reduce the risk of damage to the product." Andrews says 70 per cent of the work the company gets from the sector is upgrade work, although the lion’s share of Wazee Crane’s income from aerospace is through fit-outs for new facilities.
When bidding for jobs, he sees a number of companies that likely share the same experiences, mainly larger firms.
"By and large its the same group of companies competing.
"Again there’s a lot of this business that is somewhat regionalised, and it’s still a competitive business so if there’s a project in Southern California then some of the big guys in Southern California or California would probably have an advantage over those that are much further east, and vice versa."
But for Airbus’ lifting equipment and lifting operations support department manager, Jason Sutton, this isn’t always necessarily the case.
"I personally prefer dealing with the smaller companies. Obviously there are times where if I’m ordering 20 cranes, then I go for a slightly bigger company, but if a smaller company can supply it there’s no reason why we shouldn’t use them. There’s a couple of ways.
"We’ve got an approved supplier base so it’ll have to be one of the approved suppliers or one of the suppliers we’ve used before.
"One of our other criteria is that they hold full LEEA membership. But that doesn’t limit it totally.
"We are receptive to new companies, they just have to then go through the approved suppliers method. There are certain hoops that they jump through on a procurement basis, all the usual methods, environmental policy, health and safety policy, financial checks, all the usual stuff.
LEEA membership, if we’ve used them before or they’re an approved supplier. It’s a lot quicker if we’ve used the companies before but we are receptive to new companies and also word of mouth from our sister companies."
Word of mouth certainly goes a long way in what Andrews says is a very conservative business arena. "Manufacturers are more about the features on the equipment than they are brand specific. And it probably goes without saying that they’re not going to look at somebody who has no track record. If a new player was to enter the market and still have all of the features and enhancements that they’re looking for, until they gain some exposure and some experience the chances of them getting into that bid pool would be very remote. The aerospace industry is a very conservative industry."
"It doesn’t take long to get out of it though, if you don’t take care and don’t do a good job you’ll get out far quicker than what you were able to get in."
There are a myriad of requirements that companies run into on a regular basis working in this industry.
Control systems often include capabilities such as micro-positioning features so that hook movement can be controlled down to a thousandth of an inch for precision handling.
There are several aerospace companies that require dual holding brakes and redundant hoist limit switches. Often systems or customers require redundant wire ropes so that in the event of a catastrophic failure of one of the parts of rope the load’s not going to come to the ground and still remain static.
Andrews says: "Obviously most hoist brakes are on the input side of the drive train and typically there’s nothing on the output side.
"I know a lot of our aerospace customers look at a large drum brake that is activated in an over-speed condition in the event that there is a catastrophic failure within the mechanical parts. The key with those is that there are several manufacturers that have brakes that activate on the drum.
"What makes a lot of what we see unique in aerospace is that aerospace has to have the ability to manually lower the load in the event that that catastrophic occurrence would happen.
"[Some manufacturers] have a big ratchet and pawl assembly that locks the drum in case of a problem, but you have to then come in and relive the load, take the load off that motor in order to be able to lower the load, and that’s prohibited in aerospace because you don’t want something else coming in and touching a billion dollar satellite or whatever.
"You have to be able to manually lower the load if that brake’s out."
Commenting on other common requests from aerospace manufacturers when specifying lifting equipment, Andrews adds: "Seismic restraints are pretty common.
"We are seeing more and more with newer technology, more of the aerospace industry is requiring load readout either to a scoreboard on the crane, or more lately we’re seeing that they want that readout at the transmitter.
"Almost all of these installations have gone to radio as a primary means of control so we’re seeing a lot more requirements for that load display right at the transmitter. Overload protection is common on all of them."
Although unable to provide direct comparison himself, Andrews highlights the nature of the technology requirements from the sector may not be all that new to companies working in other highly demanding environments. "It’s very possible that our industry is finally catching up a little bit [to the nuclear industry]. I can’t tell you that the specifications are being driven by European standards, I really don’t know where the evolution of these originate.
"One other requirement we see that is unique to aerospace is the requirement for the crane supplier to provide directly or indirectly a failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) on at the very least primary lifting components, anything that’s in the lifting path, and that can be a fairly daunting task if you are not equipped with engineering support staff, these are pretty involved reports.
"A lot of visual indicating lights on the cranes. I’ve got one customer that has literally a light stack that’s on the bridge that you can see from anywhere in the rooms and gives you anything from the power on to what operating mode you’re in to if there is an overload there will be an visual light that goes on. If there’s a brake failure there’s another visual light that you see, and I think right now there’s a total of six or seven visual lights for different scenarios on the crane."
But the requirements on each job can often be as varied as the clients themselves. In the US, each job may be very unique, but one of the best standards for a crane builder and installer should aim for when bidding for aerospace work is that set by NASA. As well as joining a select band of companies able to realistically bid for work from the prestigious space agency, their prospects for work in the general industry certainly won’t be harmed.
"Most of the aerospace companies again define their own requirements internally," says Andrews. "Some of our customers rely on NASA’s specifications for handling critical lifts, and NASA has a specification that details requirements for cranes used in handling critical lifts.
"There are other companies that again, same industry, same aerospace, who have enhanced their own internal specifications and then have different requirements yet than those that are within NASA specification. So there doesn’t seem to be one governing guideline beyond OSHA, CMAA, etc, that covers all of the aerospace industry.
"Its specifically job driven, its customer driven. We see specs for cranes for customers that have numerous enhancements, and we see other specifications for other customers that are handling the same type of critical lifts, same type of hardware, that don’t have some of those available options."
Although not strictly necessary, meeting stringent NASA requirements has certainly helped Konecranes.
Two years ago, Konecranes were contracted by NASA’s Plum Brook station in Sandusky, Ohio to upgrade a polar crane used for positioning spacecraft components during testing. The crane was originally installed almost 40 years ago as part of the Space Power Facility (SPF) at the station’s Glenn Research Center, home to the world’s largest space environment simulation chamber.
As the crane was routinely used in the dome-capped vacuum chamber to securely position sophisticated and expensive hardware during testing, and as that hardware was eventually bound for space there was never any room for error during the testing process.
Konecranes installed upgrades to improve the crane’s functionality, such a load limiter that allowed NASA personnel to effectively monitor how much the crane was lifting to avoid lifting overweight items and situations when loads are still attached to fixtures, hence the excess weight registered.
As well as being able to reliably do its job, the crane needed to be capable of performing without affecting the outcome of the tests. Vacuum testing of spacebound components is a necessity, but leads to the release of gasses (outgassing) trapped in the steel components of a standard crane. Using a standard crane would mean dirt particles, grease and oil would be released, which could affect the delicate circuitry of shuttle components as well as affecting their profile by adhering to surfaces.
For this reason the crane was originally made entirely from aluminum, for its low outgassing properties, and meant that any upgrades to the crane would have to be made from similarly capable materials.
For Konecranes this meant that any ball bearings replaced or any wiring or insulation used in the control panels had to have low outgassing properties. For the ball bearings this required a specific type of grease to be used, and the control panel wiring and insulation had to be made of Teflon rather than machine tool wire.
They were also able to design the control system so that installing and removing it from shuttle components took just hours, a marked improvement on the days previously required to complete such a task.
