Volvo CE
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When contractors talk to heavy equipment manufacturers and their dealers about improving productivity, efficiency or safety on their jobsites, new machine technologies are typically the hot topic. What can sometimes get overlooked are the supporting services that improve how those machine technologies perform.
Well-built machines are a great start — but when you pair valuable services with them, you get a truly comprehensive solution that helps you gain a competitive edge.
Here at Volvo, we like to say the right services plus the right machines equal the best solution. That’s why we’ve been hard at work developing services that not only help customers get the work done, but get it done faster, at a lower cost and with maximized uptime.
From productivity and site optimization to jobsite connectivity, check out these four Volvo services designed to do just that.
Connected Map
Increasing the efficiency of transport operations can help cut travel times, minimize material mixing, lower fuel consumption and reduce emissions. To do it, you need better insight into your production flows, and Connected Map allows you to see on a digital map where all your machines are in real time. And not only machines, but also other vehicles and pedestrians. You can use it with Volvo machines, other brands of machines, phones for pedestrians and vehicles on site.
With Connected Map, all machines and vehicles can see each other, and you can see what the site looks like in reality from a computer in the office. You can see roads, points of interest like a break room or office, load and dump zones, and so on. The map can be viewed from the machines or from the office.
If you have a bottleneck in a certain area of the site, your site manager can redirect traffic to reduce idle time, for example. A bottleneck could be trucks waiting in line to be loaded or bad road conditions causing delays.
Connected Map can boost your productivity and increase safety and awareness on site. You can set up restricted zones and speed zones, and you can have your Volvo machines automatically slow down to that set speed limit. You can have a speed zone covering the complete site, or only in a small area where you have people walking. You simply build the map from the Office Portal, which is very easy to use.
For Site Managers, the Office Portal makes it easier to manage larger sites and even creates the possibility to manage multiple sites simultaneously. Not only does Office Portal provide a visual overview of all machines, operators and temporary visitors on site, it also allows your site manager to react to the prevailing site conditions. Your site manager can introduce measures such as one-way traffic or restricted zones and communicate these changes to all users in an instant helping to improve awareness, reduce accidents and increase productivity.
Performance Indicator
If you want to get more detailed data about your production, Performance Indicator is a great tool to consider. It uses on-board weighing and other machine data to send machine performance indicators to the portal. This allows you to optimize onsite operations by getting a visualized overview of production, fuel efficiency and machine cycle data. Via a real-time dashboard, you can easily compile and alter data according to your needs.
Speed and location are obtained from the machine through Connected Map. For Volvo machines with Volvo Co-Pilot and On-Board Weighing, production data is captured automatically.
With Performance Indicator, you can visualize your operations with clear, easy-to-create dashboards, assess whether production is on track and be forewarned of any production or operational issues so you can take quick and appropriate action if needed. When you reduce guesswork and any inadvertent confusion, you can make better decisions to improve efficiency and productivity.
Connected Load Out
We’ve talked about Connected Map and how it allows you to see how material is being moved around a jobsite. But what about when material is being loaded to move off site, like onto an on-road truck in a quarry, for example?
For this type of site, we offer Connected Load Out. Connected Load Out is designed to improve the efficiency and productivity of the load out process by connecting the loader operator, site office and trucks. It’s a digital solution for Volvo wheel loaders with Load Assist and On-Board Weighing and Volvo excavators with Dig Assist On-Board Weighing.
Connected load out makes it possible for on-road truck drivers to place orders from a phone app and communicate directly with the loading machine via the app. Once the order is placed, the machine will see an ETA of the truck and can plan the work until the truck arrives on site.
For example, if the machine operator sees that it’s 10 more minutes until the next truck arrives, the operator can leave the pile and do some cleanup work in between the trucks. It makes jobsites less stressful and helps you feel much more organized.
All load tickets are stored digitally, and you can save a lot of time planning your load out work.
Task Manager
If you’re overseeing large jobsites like infrastructure projects, we can help you improve your productivity there as well. Task Manager is a tool that helps you visualize the progress of your large projects. The data can be accessed from any device, anywhere in the world. As an example, if you’re preparing the ground and you need to move large amounts of material, you can set the targets in the application and all machines on the site can work toward that same target.
This tool helps you with the planning aspect, and you’ll see ahead of time if you’re on time or if you’re delayed. Many tasks on a jobsite are dependent on each other, so it’s crucial to be able to plan well when you’re dealing with a large number of machines and having many companies involved in the same project. Task manager is a great tool for this type of user. It works for any brand of machine. If you have a Volvo machine, it will be a more streamlined experience for your operators — but if not, you can also run it from a cell phone.
It works in real time as long as you’re in a spot with decent internet connection. If you’re in a spotty area, you don’t have to worry about losing data. If you lose your internet connection, all data is stored in the machine until next time your machine is connected.
Task Manager is suitable for everyone from production managers and site supervisors to sub-contractors, all of whom have a vital role to play to keep infrastructure projects on target. Data can be filtered by different time frames, projects, activities, materials or work orders, providing updates in real-time and facilitating status update reports to management.
These four services — introduced at CONEXPO 2023 — are only the beginning of our commitment to continue to offer new ways to help you run your business the most efficient and productive way possible. They’re valuable additions to existing services like Site Simulation and ActiveCare Direct which many customers have come to rely on over the years to improve the way they run their businesses.
To learn which of our services can help you improve productivity, efficiency and safety — and ultimately your profitability — talk to your local Volvo dealer to learn which of these services they currently offer.
