OEM INTERVIEW
“THE CUSTOMER GETS LOWER
OPERATING COSTS. WE GAIN
REAL-TIME INSIGHTS INTO
PRODUCT PERFORMANCE AND
UTILIZATION, WHICH INFORMS
OUR R&D EFFORTS”
Craig Bruns, vice president customer support, Crown Equipment
LEFT AND BELOW:
Connected Service
minimizes downtime
for IoT-equipped lifttrucks.
The vehicles
are monitored, and
maintenance is carried
out only when necessary,
thereby saving costs
Advanced Lift-truck Technology International 2019 49
serviced after a certain number of
miles or time. With a lift-truck,
traditionally you grease everything
every 90 to 180 days, but you don’t
know how much it’s been used.
Connected Service allows us to keep
an hourly record of each truck and
switch to hourly-based maintenance
instead of calendar-based.
That could change how
organizations structure maintenance
plans. Supply chain and warehouse
managers can design a plan around
how they actually use the forklifts.
Similar to the ‘Power by the Hour’
leasing concept, where customers only
pay for the time they used the
equipment, ‘Maintenance by the Hour’
might be a better option than a flatrate
monthly programme for some
organizations. Maintenance costs
directly correlate with equipment use,
and maintenance schedules can adapt
to peaks and troughs in the cycle.
It sounds as if everyone benefits…
Connected Service is a win-win for
both our customers and for Crown
Equipment. The customer gets lower
maintenance costs, which means lower
operating costs. We gain real-time
insights into product performance and
utilization, which informs our
research and development efforts,
service and maintenance strategies
and programmes, and ultimately
enhances our customer service.
How does a connected service
help customers make decisions
about automation?
You start with telematics. When we go
to a customer and ask, “How many
decisions are your lift-truck operators
making per shift?”, that gets them
thinking: forward, up, down, look
behind you, go backwards. A lift-truck
operator who has to make just two or
three decisions probably makes up
around 0.01% of our customers! A
connected business service, which
records and analyzes this data, can
assist customers towards automation.
This is the baseline to determine
whether we should even have the
conversation about automation.
Crown Equipment has also focused
on the Connected Technician. Does
technology make their lives easier?
Connected Service is a big help for
technicians, and for our entire service
network. Connected lift-trucks help
because they monitor themselves, and
if something goes wrong they can
send a message to a local Crown
retailer location. That generates an
alarm, which along with probabilities
of what the issue is and what parts are
needed is passed on to the technicians,
one of whom will be dispatched.
It’s the exact opposite of a car
dealer, who stocks all the parts to fix
your car in the garage. Our service is
mobile. We send the right tech, with
the right parts, at the first time of
asking. This means supply chain
managers can expect service techs to
arrive on-site already understanding
the issue and having the right parts to
make the repair.
Your service is only as good as
your business system. If your lift-truck
can tell a technician what’s wrong,
you will make everyone in the chain
more efficient. ALT