AI no cause for alarm, says cranes boss
Condra overhead cranes installed in a factory environment (Image source: Condra)
Artificial intelligence (AI) will disrupt business sectors in different ways and to different degrees, but will hardly disrupt the lifting equipment industry at all.
This is the opinion of Marc Kleiner, managing director of crane and hoist manufacturer Condra, who says AI is more likely to change processes and work flows at customer installations, rather than the equipment itself or the lifting industry as a whole.
“People are talking about AI as a change agent equal to the industrial revolution, and maybe that is so,” he said. “But when something heavy needs lifting, artificial intelligence is not going to change the fact that you will still need a machine of some sort to do that.“
Over time, AI will probably change the methodology of manufacture where the crane is installed, but it will not change the lifting industry itself,” he said.
Kleiner pointed out that AI has been around for years, with a presence established throughout commerce and industry long before the headline-grabbing advancement of today’s large-language machine learning models.
“Motion control sensors, frequency drives and vibration monitoring pods have long been a part of crane safety, efficiency and reliability,” said Kleiner. “All these components make use of artificial intelligence. But you still need a skilled technician to fit them, or replace the part predicted to fail. There is not suddenly going to be some kind of magic wand that will get the installation to do that.
“The large-language machine learning AI models that use artificial neural networks to train and advance themselves – well, I don’t think you’re going to find much of that in the lifting equipment industry, and you might never find them.”
Crane automation
Kleiner said that what was more likely to happen was a move to crane automation within processes involving repetitive lifting and positioning tasks, for example warehouse packing and picking operations, or sensitive tasks such as the replacement of fuel rods in nuclear reactors.
“In these types of processes, there will probably be a shift of the operator away from the crane to a more remote workstation,” he said. “But this type of automation has been around for a long time. It is nothing new. Condra has several fully automated and semi-automated crane installations in our customer base.”
Kleiner said that today’s crane operators tend to view AI systems with a sort of cautious scepticism, appreciating their usefulness while still relying on their own skill, awareness and split-second judgement.
He cautioned that the AI add-ons available for cranes and hoists are expensive.“Customers often exclude them from specifications at the tender phase because of the cost,” he said, “instead investing in a better quality crane at the outset, one that is going to last without needing the add-ons.
“Whether AI is used or not will always depend to a large extent on the answer to a single question: can the crane perform the same task for a lower investment?”
Design impact
Turning to design, Kleiner admitted that AI is likely to have a substantial impact.“Condra has invested heavily in AI-driven CAD programmes to enable optimal component design,” he said. “But you have to be careful with optimisation because the programme can progress in the wrong direction. And you still need an engineer to go through the results, you still have to manufacture that component. So the jobs are safe. The AI drive toward improved theory continues, but the people remain, at least in the lifting equipment industry they do.”
On hacking, Kleiner pointed to last year’s hack at Jaguar Land Rover which resulted in a five-week halt to production worldwide, an estimated US$2bn fallout from lost production, and severe disruption to 5,000 supplier businesses, some of which needed government support to avoid financial ruin.
“Hacking by bad actors is always going to be a danger,” he admitted, “so accelerating use of AI technology will certainly increase that risk.”
Asked about driverless cars progressing to the point of operator-free cranes, he dismissed the analogy as irrelevant.
“Even if the crane could position itself correctly, you would still need people to attach the hooks or change the bottom block to a grab so that the crane can carry out the designated lift. As I said before, AI will change the way things are manufactured, but not the application of a crane to lift the part that needs to be moved.”
