Editor’s note: Cara Woodland is global voice of the customer manager at Columbus McKinnon Corporation, a Buffalo, N.Y., manufacturer of material handling products.
How many times have you overexerted yourself when shoveling snow or lifting heavy objects only to wake up the next day with a sore back, knees and shoulders? Usually this is from stretching, straining and lifting in a way that your body isn’t used to. What if you did this every day of the week?
Many of the jobs that make up the heart of manufacturing and keep our country running require this type of daily effort. They are people who fix your power lines after an ice storm; make your cars, tractors and airplanes; sort your packages for shipping; and mine deep in the ground. Their jobs require them to lift heavy objects, sometimes in very awkward positions. To help them with this, they often use hoists, a piece of equipment similar to a winch used to lift or pull a heavy object. Sprains and strains from muscle overuse are prevalent problems in manual jobs, leading to pain, surgeries and lost productivity.
The manual hoist product line has not seen significant innovation in over 20 years. Columbus McKinnon, a global manufacturer of manual and powered hoists, wanted to change this and better understand the needs in this market. “To create the best ratchet lever hoist on the market, Columbus McKinnon started by asking a simple question: How do people use ratchet lever tools to perform their job?” says André Schon, senior global product manager, manual hoist products.
Research leads to redesign
Columbus McKinnon’s first step in its search to create a new ratchet lever tool was to better understand how the end user interacted with the tools. To do this, an ergonomic study was conducted by an outside research university. Although ergonomics is not new to the research world, this was something Columbus McKinnon had not done before. It added a new perspective and yielded many new insights into how to design this product.
Following the ergonomic study, the design team began a series of over 200 formal and informal interviews across the world to gather insight into how the product was used in a normal working environment. After the lengthy motion-analysis study and an extensive international voice of the customer study, Columbus McKinnon better understood that many of its manual products were not ergonomic.
First, the study found that the majority of the manual hoist product lines required repetitive motion as users cranked the handle back and forth over and over in order to lift or pull an object (Figure 1). This motion is similar to using a jack to lift your car when changing a flat tire, but over a much more prolonged time frame. Second, the amount of leverage in the cranking action is limited by the wrist’s range of motion. Third, when the lever is pulled the hoist would often twist and turn, making it difficult to control without using two hands to stabilize the hoist. Lastly, the manual hoist is used in all kinds of body positions, such as kneeling, laying on your stomach or the side of the body. The manual hoist can only be pulled one way, causing awkward body positions. From both the ergonomic and voice of the customer study, Columbus McKinnon determined that many of its manual lever hoist products needed to be redesigned to help reduce muscle fatigue and strain related injuries.
According to Schon, this study led the product development engineering team to begin to design a “product that exceeds the ergonomic and performance expectations of customers around the world.” The engineering team introduced a number of different improvements. This included the Sidewinder lever handle, which allows for the end user to have 360-degree rotation capability and a fold-out handle that can be locked into place on either side of the hoist (Figure 2). The hoist was also made of aluminum, which made it lighter and had an arrow indicator and switch to change the lifting or lowering chain direction. These simple changes seemed to solve a multitude of problems for the customer.
Testing prototypes
After the preliminary design, prototypes were made and tested by internal and external customers worldwide. The test itself was to observe end users and distributors testing out the new prototype. The observation was then followed up with informal qualitative research. After each observational interview, key insights were documented and relayed back to the engineering team.
Overall, end users had many positive things to say about the new design. First, the hoist handle increased productivity by allowing the user to operate it 360 degrees. Second, the handle allowed the user to determine which side the handle would be on, which helped in tight spaces and allowed operation with the user’s preferred hand. Third, the oscillating handle helped stabilize the hoist during operation, making the hoist easier to operate with one hand. In addition, the chain lifting or lowering indicator and switch could be changed with one finger while holding on to the hoist handle, an advantage to users operating with one hand on the hoist, like linemen who work on powerlines and hang off of electric poles and towers. Testing found that these changes not only increased the productivity of the hoist by 300-700 percent but also decreased the pull force by up to 30 percent and minimized operator fatigue and wear and tear on the wrist and body. Ultimately this design increased productivity 12-fold through the 360-degree range of motion and decreasing pull force by up to 30 percent, while also reducing the repetitive wrist action experienced with traditional ratchet lever hoists.
As with every end-user test, there were also recommendations for changes and improvements. Key themes coming out of the research included feedback that end users were concerned with the reliability of the oscillating handle. What would happen if grime and grit got in it? Would it still be able to function and oscillate? Given this feedback, a durability test was conducted, along with a sand test where the hoist was dumped and dragged through a pit of sand. It passed both tests. End users were also concerned with the size, diameter and grip profile of the hand lever. With this feedback, the engineering team made changes to the handle design, including shortening the chain and the lifting and lowering switch lever so it didn’t stick out and catch on objects surrounding the hoist. Grooves were also added to the handle to increase the ability to grip and hold on to the hoist. The last change was a material one: The handwheel was changed from plastic to aluminum to increase its durability. Ultimately the final end-user test and informal qualitative research led to a more productive and ergonomic hoist.
A competitive advantage
The product launched in November 2016 and sales figures are still being compiled. That said, the biggest advantage for Columbus McKinnon was the competitive market gain that was achieved through thorough research. In addition, the learnings and changes made to this hoist line can be applied to the rest of the manual hoist products to make them more productive and ergonomic, increasing the influence of the research data and helping to save the backs of those workers we rely on every day.