Increase Throughput & Space with workstation cranes
CLIENT
Family owned and operated, Edgewood Monuments is known in the Puget Sound area as the source for the finest headstones, monuments, memorials and portraits. They provide each customer with an outstanding product through quality granite craftsmanship.
OPPORTUNITY
The nature of Edgewood Monuments' production centers around moving, manipulating, and storing massive pieces of granite. When ReSolve connected with Edgewood Monuments, their production system was inefficient resulting in low throughput. The difficulty of lifting these heavy stones required excess motions elongating the process.
DESIGN Process
“ Our throughput increased by 5x as we were able to eliminate production wastes. Now we are able to stack our product which has also drastically increased the utilization of our floor space.”
Understanding the customers business operations and goals while equipped with expert knowledge of the systems available, ReSolves lead solution designer got to work. A few overhead crane systems were considered, however, implementing a jib crane would restrict the user to one work area. To optimize the shops' limited space a workstation crane was determined to be the best option.
Solution
Proceeding with this system has now allowed Edgewood Monuments to fully utilize their facility for production and storage. The enclosed track design allows for ease of bridge and trolley movement under heavy loads. This design made it possible for a push/pull solution vs. motorizing the XY directions. Applications range from lighter 250lb capacity, up to heavier 4000lb capacity lifts. For this project a heavier capacity lift was implemented to account for the heavy granite Edgewood Monuments handles daily.
Impact
The implementation of this solution increased Edgewood Monuments' rate of production by 5 times. They were also able to eliminate production waste and with the new ability to stack products, have drastically increased floor space utilization.
