Bodo baggert digital

Bodo baggert digital

Alternative drives, digitalisation, sustainability

– Bauma 2019 ends with record results:

Bild: Kim Mor­gan-Maier, April 2019 (Sicht auf den Stand der Wack­er Neu­son Group)

the world lead­ing trade fair for con­struc­tion, build­ing mate­ri­als, min­ing machin­ery etc., attract­ed over 620,000 vis­i­tors – 40,000 more than the last event in 2016. This should come as no sur­prise as, con­sid­er­ing the recent ban on diesel vehi­cles in city cen­tres dom­i­nat­ing the head­lines, the dig­ging and bull­doz­er indus­tries have to impro­vise. Zep­pelin CAT, man­u­fac­tur­er of heavy con­struc­tion site equip­ment, stat­ed, “the demands for clean­er, qui­eter and more effi­cient con­struc­tion machines are increas­ing.” In response to these demands, the Garch­ing-based com­pa­ny pre­sent­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly dri­ven vari­ants of their com­pact wheel load­ers and han­dling exca­va­tors that still do their job, but with­out exhaust emis­sions and with low noise production

The Wack­er Neu­son Group, a lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of con­struc­tion equip­ment and com­pact machines, also react­ed to the demands and focussed its trade fair pres­ence pri­mar­i­ly on elec­tri­cal equip­ment. Their entire 6,000 square meter stall was designed to be an elec­tri­fy­ing world of expe­ri­ence, sup­port­ed by impres­sive 700 staff mem­bers oper­at­ing at their stand. Mar­tin Lehn­er, CEO of the Wack­er Neu­son Group, stat­ed, “through our broad range of elec­tron­i­cal­ly dri­ven and emis­sions-free prod­ucts as well as our range of dig­i­tal ser­vices, we are one of the fore­run­ners of the future.” With “Zero Emis­sion” prod­ucts, cus­tomers can now already imple­ment the whole process of a clas­sic, inner city con­struc­tion site for infra­struc­ture main­te­nance com­plete­ly emis­sion-free and noise-reduced.” “Zero Emis­sion” is also the mot­to of the Kramer Group’s brand. In their pre­sen­ta­tion at bau­ma, the com­pa­ny dis­played vir­tu­al aug­ment­ed real­i­ty appli­ca­tions so that cus­tomers and inter­est­ed par­ties were able to get first impres­sions of the prod­uct devel­op­ments and see machines designs at a very ear­ly stage of devel­op­ment as well as pro­vide valu­able feed­back, (e.g. on sim­u­lat­ing ergonom­ic conditions).

In the wake of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, con­struc­tion sites are devel­op­ing more and more towards becom­ing inter­linked, logis­tic ecosys­tems, in which human and machine exchange infor­ma­tion as well as machiner­ies among each oth­er. At the same time, there has been a shift from pure machine oper­a­tion to com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the oper­a­tor and the machine. Dri­ver assis­tance sys­tems and func­tion­al­i­ties from the net­worked world of con­struc­tion site 4.0 are also becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant. Lieb­herr regards these fac­tors as the main dri­vers in the devel­op­ment process of INTUSI and is now enter­ing a new era of machine com­mu­ni­ca­tion with this oper­at­ing con­cept. INTUSI, short for INTu­itive USer Inter­face, is bring­ing Liebherr’s prod­ucts to a com­plete­ly new lev­el as it com­bines intel­li­gent oper­at­ing log­ic with sophis­ti­cat­ed machine intel­li­gence. In the not too dis­tant future, this oper­at­ing con­cept will be used in all Lieb­herr earth­mov­ing and mate­r­i­al han­dling machines. Con­sid­er­ing the inno­v­a­tive inge­nu­ity of INTUSI, it was almost oblig­a­tory that Lieb­herr won this year’s bau­ma Inno­va­tion Award in the design category.

Ergonom­ics – anoth­er buzz­word of the year. The con­struc­tion indus­try is already being forced to make its jobs ever more attrac­tive. Nowa­days, dri­ver cab­ins are no longer noisy met­al cas­ings. They have trans­formed into much more mod­ern con­trol cen­tres, styl­ish cock­pits and sophis­ti­cat­ed high tech con­trol sys­tems. Once upon a time, the con­struc­tion indus­try relied on the phys­i­cal­i­ty of its work­ers. Bulky levers had to be pulled with pure mus­cle pow­er, steer­ing wheels had to be turned with phys­i­cal force; today, you can find the likes of touch pads and mul­ti­func­tion joy­sticks, which react even to the slight­est touch. How­ev­er, it is well known that you can­not make an omelette with­out break­ing a few eggs. The wear and tear on the mate­r­i­al is a dai­ly strug­gle. Cater­pil­lar pre­sent­ed an app at bau­ma that aims to alle­vi­ate this strug­gle. The app enables users to remote­ly access oper­at­ing hours and the loca­tion, to receive diag­nos­tic codes and man­age main­te­nance direct­ly from their smart­phone with­out hav­ing to switch on their com­put­er. Any machine equipped with this fea­ture can report in real time to the customer’s ter­mi­nal device in the event of main­te­nance require­ments, mal­func­tions of unex­pect­ed changes of loca­tion. The app also pro­vides an overview of oper­at­ing hours, down­times and any nec­es­sary ser­vice intervals.

For those who found the inno­va­tions shown on the 614,000 m² of exhi­bi­tion space not sat­is­fy­ing enough, the Wack­er Neu­son Group sur­prised the atten­dees with a par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing treat: a Fer­ris wheel that brought all those adven­tur­ous enough to a dizzy­ing height of 35 meters and offered a spec­tac­u­lar view of the bau­ma. The Fer­ris wheel proved to be a superb crowd-pleas­er and was a spe­cial per­son­al high­light. After hours of the hus­tle and bus­tle, I was glad to rest my feet for a few min­utes. Any by the way: the sealed off cab­ins are a great spot for my cus­tomer appointments.

After the mate­r­i­al bat­tle is before the mate­r­i­al bat­tle. Before talk­ing about the next bau­ma in Munich in less than three years, the con­struc­tion machin­ery indus­try can look at full order books and con­tin­ue to com­pete in the tech race – dig­i­tal­ly and ful­ly net­worked of course!