Manufacturers of heavy construction and mining equipment, often referred to as “yellow equipment,” have always placed a premium on the uptime of the assets they sell. This equipment is expensive and vital to the business efforts of the customers they sell to, whether they are rental equipment operators or large construction enterprises. For precisely this reason, these manufacturers routinely provide extensive warranties covering their products and incur significant expense supporting those warranties. In order to improve financial performance while also delivering superior uptime to their customers, manufacturers of construction and mining equipment are looking at Internet of Things (IoT) technology as a means to improve business outcomes.
Heavy equipment used in large construction projects are essentially complex systems comprised of multiple interlocking subsystems, with the powertrain and hydraulics subsystems being the most susceptible to failure. Many manufacturers have already embedded sensor technology enabling the collection of operating data from a range of critical points within these subsystems. Thus far, the primary purpose of this data collection system has been to feed real-time and historic data to the equipment operator so that they can make more informed decisions concerning maintenance requirements.
Equipment downtime is the enemy of all participants in the construction equipment supply chain. From an equipment manufacturer standpoint, direct monetization affect reductions in actual service costs. Indirect benefits of DataV include heightened brand reputation for high reliability.
Warranty costs represent a very significant expense for construction, frequently two to three percent of total sales. Correctly designed IoT systems can reduce warranty costs in a number of ways. IoT can send immediate commands to the equipment in order to minimize further damage caused by continued use. Because many IoT systems have the ability to analyze equipment error codes along with historical repair information, service managers can assign a technician with the correct skills and ensure that only necessary parts are used. DataV can keep track of what work was actually performed, minimizing erroneous or fraudulent warranty claims.
Construction equipment manufacturers strive to maximize the performance of their products, whether to improve output or increase efficiency. DataV can aggregate information from the entire fleet of equipment, identifying those that are underperforming and providing prescriptive, corrective actions. This feature can be used to modify calibration or configuration settings immediately, and can serve as input to the R&D process.
IoT technology is finding it’s way into many businesses around the word. But for industrial applications such as heavy equipment for construction, mining, and public works, IoT has been proven to provide tangible financial benefits to manufacturers while at the same time delivering superior products with greater uptime characteristics to their customers.