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B&R Industrial Automation offers high-performance and technologically advanced products and solutions to construction and off-highway equipment OEMs.<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Saurabh Kulkarni, Mobile Automation Expert, India, </span>elaborates on the use of digital technology in the construction equipment (CE) industry and its progress. <p></p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">How do you see the progress of digital technology in CE industry?</span><br />The construction equipment industry has always had a tendency to stick to traditional methods, but has always been technology craving. However, being a cost-sensitive industry, the investment in high-tech equipment or IT was always in question. However, since the last couple of years, big players have started leveraging technologies such as Industrial IoT (IIoT) for real-time data monitoring, data analytics, predictive maintenance for enhancing efficiency and boosting margins. In India, government is also laying the foundation with its 'Digital India' mission and various schemes. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is encouraging the implementation of a 'Value Engineering Program'<span style="font-size: 10pt;">' to promote the use of new technologies. With these developments, construction equipment market is likely to witness a rise in technology demand and see an influx of increased automation and digitisation concepts, coupled with enhanced safety.</span></p><p> While many large OEMs have already embraced some technologies, we expect use of digital technologies to become more widespread among construction equipment (CE) manufacturers of all sizes in the coming years.</p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">What are the major factors that drive the demand for digitalisation in CE?</span><br />Strict time management for timely completion of a project is an important factor in any construction project. Any delays, disruption or downtime on a construction site can be a costly affair. Heavy equipment such as excavators, loaders, scrapers and bulldozers play an important role in construction sector. One major factor that has been identified as a probable reason for delay in most projects is unplanned downtime or breakdown of such equipment. With digitalisation, equipment is becoming increasingly automated and connected, enabling operators to use them more efficiently. With technology, operators and OEMs can monitor key maintenance issues such as excessive vibrations, temperature fluctuations, unnecessary noise, need of lubrication and greasing, and monitor valuable data for taking corrective actions. On detection of abnormal patterns, maintenance engineer can take proactive steps before critical equipment fails. This not only saves time and money but also prevents unnecessary and unplanned delays in construction projects. Easy accessibility and operability, increased safety, improved viability, asset lifecycle of equipment, and reduced risks are some of the other factors driving digitalisation in this sector. </p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">What are the key digital solutions offered for CE?</span><br />Digital technology for mobile equipment is currently in a state of transition. Faced with unrelenting demands for higher productivity, construction industry is turning to increasingly automated and networked machinery. B&R solutions allow automation concepts for mobile equipment to be implemented easier than ever. In mobile equipment, condition monitoring plays an important role by continuously monitoring the health of an equipment. It reduces equipment downtime and helps prevent unplanned outages. Our X90 control solution provides mobile equipment OEMs with the highest degree of performance, scalability, cost competitiveness for heavy-duty applications and is equipped with condition monitoring functions. Wear and tear of components in mobile machinery can be detected in their early stages and can be corrected before they result in unplanned downtime. Condition-based predictive maintenance can maximise machine availability and save considerable cost of outages and unplanned service calls. The X90 mobile control systems are specially designed for harsh environments. They can handle operating temperatures from -40 to +85¦C and are resistant to vibration, shock, salt, UV light and oil. Adherence to specific industry standards for agriculture, forestry, construction and municipal vehicles ensures maximum flexibility when using mobile automation products.</p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Do you provide digital solution as inbuilt or optional feature for machines?</span><br />Our ready-to-use solutions for tasks such as data acquisition, energy monitoring, condition monitoring etc, help machine builders to create networked and efficient equipment. In addition, all our controllers are supporting open connectivity solutions such as OPC UA, MQTT, and AMQP for interfacing with cloud systems. All our systems are scalable and the OEM can choose and use the features based on his requirements and needs. We can confidently say that all our products are ready for enabling OEMs for leveraging the digital revolution.</p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">What are the advantages of your digital solutions? </span><br />Our digital solutions help customers benefit from an easy-to-use development environment, high-performance real-time operating system and ready-made software components. B&R's mobile automation lineup gives OEMs all the tools to build or maintain their competitive edge in the market. Every aspect of our automation system is designed for modular, concurrent engineering. This helps OEMs to get their products to market faster allowing them to be flexible to new requirements and special requests.</p><p> When it comes to engineering new machines and systems, software development is becoming increasingly complex and utilising significant time, resources and cost. Nevertheless, the lion's share of this work is spent on programming basic functions and not the core equipment technology. Our mapp technology is revolutionising the development of application software. These modular software blocks simplify the development of new programs and reduce development time for new machines and systems by an average of 67 per cent.</p><p> We offer complete hardware and software solutions, comprehensive service and hard-earned expertise in automation and digitalisation of machinery and equipment.</p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">How do you look at the demand trend for digital solutions in CE?</span><br />Construction equipment industry is one of the leading industries in technology adoption. However, the challenge like any other industry is lack of awareness and investment knowledge. However, Indian Government is promoting and encouraging the use of digital technologies not only in IT and industrial automation, but also in other sectors including construction industry. Strong economic growth in India is providing support to big government projects such as Sagarmala, Bharatmala, Jal Marg Vikas project, etc, and is expected to continue to grow at strong rates over the next decade. To keep pace with market trends and demands, construction industry is increasingly turning towards automation and networked equipment. In addition, retrofitting existing equipment with ready-to-use solutions is also ongoing trend within the market. Our product portfolio for construction sector consists of high-performance and technologically advanced products. Since the past 20 years, many OEMs, factories and equipment manufacturers have placed their trust in B&R's world-class products and technologies. We are in pole position today to enable OEMs of the mobile automation and off-highway equipment to leverage maximum benefit from our advanced automation concepts and their adoption, which are further supported by policies of Indian Government.</p>