Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/605412
acquisitions and partnerships in just this year including Yard Club, a peer-to-peer equipment rental ser- vice and Uptake, an analytics firm that develops predictive diagnostic technology for equipment. The company also established an analytics and innovation division headed by an officer-level executive and formed a strategic alliance with Modustri, which makes ultrasonic equipment inspection and measure- ment hardware. The new digital reality It's not just about the iron anymore, Fellin says. It's telematics, con- nectivity, data analysis, software, financing, online rental and auction technology. Those all offer solu- tions and opportunities for contrac- tors. Small companies that don't manufacture much of anything other than sensors and small black boxes – the hallmark of many dis- ruptive technologies, are providing many of them. The iron isn't going away, but Caterpillar is betting that the OEM that gets the sale is going to be the one that helps its customers man- age their equipment with the best available technology and serves as the customer counselor and advisor on technology. "People used to ask us about dig depth and lift capacity," says Fellin. "Now it's: 'How can you help me set up the jobsite so it is more productive? How do I know if my machines are working at full capac- ity? How do I know if an operator is using my machine well?' We've gone from a customer wanting a machine to a customer wanting a solution." Informed sales force "Even before technology came along, most Cat dealers and sales- men knew they couldn't just flog iron," Carpenter says. "There's was a time when you didn't have to worry about financing, and now there isn't a salesperson worth their salt who can't qualify a customer on financing. The same holds true for salespeople and technology today. It is new and represents a change to their selling approach, but it will quickly become an integral part of their everyday sale," Carpenter says. "A salesman who isn't doing that isn't going to survive," Carpenter says. "If you don't know what's weighing on the customers mind, if you can't go in and understand the processes that are keeping that cus- tomer in business or up at night, he may never give you the business. You have to become a confidante to that contractor." Every contractor faces different challenges, Carpenter says. "We need to be able to scale to what the customer needs. They may not need all the tools in our arsenal, or they may want to go to a complete digital ecosystem for their product or enterprise." Coming soon to jobsite near you In addition to big data and telemat- ics, Caterpillar is looking further down the road for the next big thing. And as it turns out there are a lot of next big things, including: Autonomous machines. "We're going to leverage what we've learned on the mining side and bring autonomy to the jobsite," says Carpenter. "We have semi- autono- mous dozers operating today and autonomous mining trucks." Augmented reality. In the ser- vice environment, augmented real- ity might mean that a technician ap- proaches a machine with his tablet computer. The tablet recognizes the machine and reads a telematics feed that pinpoints the problem. It could give him a virtual reality image of a schematic showing where the problem is, show him how to take care of the problem and enable him to order the part all on one screen, Carpenter says. Similar systems could provide benefits to operators in the cab with heads-up displays that show progress against plan. Drone technology. "We're looking at drone technology or any collection of 3D data, cameras included," Carpenter says. "There are companies today that can do a 10 minute fly-over a quarry analyze the data in a simple way for the customer to see and have the detail available to analyze. The ability to process camera data is so good they can tell aggregate stock pile types, when haul roads are becoming to narrow for safe passage or how much material has been removed to where since the last fly over. We can combine this data with our ma- chine data in real time and analyze performance," he says. December 2015 | EquipmentWorld.com 62 A mobile application that takes the paperwork out of the inspection process, Cat Inspect offers down- loadable, machine-specific forms to capture all the data you need for inspections, reports and PMs.