WORLD NEWS
Future-proofing excavators
Volvo’s latest machine on the market: the strong and innovative material handler, EW240E.
Volvo Construction Equipment’s
vice-president of Excavator Business
Platform, Sungmo Yang, discusses three
market shifts set to impact the future of
excavators.
1. Technology
Customers are always looking for the
latest technology to improve productivity
and reduce their environmental impact.
Volvo prototypes such as the EX2 fully
electric compact excavator shows the
potential for zero emission electric
excavators in the future.
As applications such as Volvo Dig
Assist surge in popularity for our
excavator customers, the trends for
machine control systems and for mobile
technologies are set to continue.
For today’s excavators, we have
developed a strong and productive way
of working, but if we are to focus on the
technology of the future — technologies
that are new to every manufacturer —
we need to develop new competencies
in electrification and telematics and also
build successful partnerships that allow
these innovations to be explored more fully.
2. Design
As the market is growing, so too are
the pressures on the design of these
machines. Compare for example the
use of the compact excavator for
working under the busy city streets
of Europe, to the demand for general-
purpose excavators to construct vast
infrastructure projects in China.
Every application is different. Equally,
one customer will look first for value for
money, while the other prioritises fuel
efficiency.
To keep up with these shifting
demands, manufacturers require an
advanced engineering programme
and a focus on design innovation. Our
designers consider three areas of heat
balance, load balance, and machine
weight balance to help understand these
individual applications. With further
advances in technology and hybrid
solutions, it will become even more
important for versatility to be built into
the very start of the design process.
3. Operations
Given there is such a wide variety of
customer needs and demands across
the world, manufacturers are looking
for new ways of working to improve
the efficiency of their operations. One
development we have been looking
at is a ‘CAST (Common Architecture
Sharing Technology) model’ approach —
something LEGO has built a business
on. Rather than having a one-size-fits-all
system, the CAST model approach works
like a set of building blocks. Simply put,
you start with the same base platform,
then add blocks A, B and C to create
a machine for the Indonesian market,
and add blocks D, E and F to build an
excavator for the Korean market, and
so on. This allows for a more efficient
process that can easily adapt as market
demand continues to change.
AUGUST
UST 2018
9