This document establishes general principles for the care and maintenance, and inspection and discard of steel wire ropes used on cranes and hoists. In addition to guidance on storage, handling, installation and maintenance, this document provides discard criteria for those running ropes which are subjected to multi-layer spooling, where both field experience and testing demonstrate that deterioration is significantly greater at the crossover zones on the drum than at any other section of rope in the system. It also provides more realistic discard criteria covering decreases in rope diameter and corrosion, and gives a method for assessing the combined effect of deterioration at any position in the rope. This document is applicable to those ropes used on the following types of cranes, the majority of which are defined in ISO 4306-1: This document applies to rope on cranes, winches and hoists used for hook, grabbing, magnet, ladle, excavator or stacking duties, whether operated manually, electrically or hydraulically. It also applies to rope used on hoists and hoist blocks.