Smart ways to improve operations with onboard machine technology
Toromont Cat product specialists Brian Davis and Patrice Blier discuss how technology helps bring ‘’inexperienced’’ operators up to speed quickly, while enabling pro-level operators to perform better than ever, taking their game to another level. They look into important tools like Cat® Grade technology, Cat® Payload Technology, E-Fence Technology, and Assisted technologies; benefits of each, challenges, key advice and customer’ needs.
In this episode, we cover several key topics including:
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Read our latest posts on our Building Tomorrow Blog:
Smart ways to improve operations with onboard machine technology
Toromont Cat product specialists Brian Davis and Patrice Blier discuss how technology helps bring ‘’inexperienced’’ operators up to speed quickly, while enabling pro-level operators to perform better than ever, taking their game to another level. They look into important tools like Cat® Grade technology, Cat® Payload Technology, E-Fence Technology, and Assisted technologies; benefits of each, challenges, key advice and customer’ needs.
In this episode, we cover several key topics including:
Connect with us :
Read our latest posts on our Building Tomorrow Blog:
All right. Hello and welcome to the onboard technology for the construction industry podcast. My name is Patrice[inaudible] and I got my lens severe degree at Laval university, and I've been working with on as a technology specialist for the last 15 years. And I'm happy today to talk about onboard technology with my colleague, Brian Davis. Hi,
Speaker 2:Uh, Brian Davis here, uh, been with Dormont for just over 13 years. Uh, I grew up in the construction business in the, in the greater Toronto area. My family, we were an earthworks contractor for 58 years. My grandfather started the business and it's been in my blood for a long time. And my dad and my uncle decided that they'd had enough and wanted to retire. I thought, you know what, it's time to do something different. And I got the opportunity to join Dormont at that time. And it's been a lot of fun and I really enjoy it here. And so trees, thanks for inviting me on today. Welcome to the building tomorrow podcast, where we dig deep into the Eastern Canada construction industry with torment cat specialists, we discuss heavy equipment industry trends and challenges affecting your business.
Speaker 1:Brian, when we talk about onboard technology, what comes into mind?
Speaker 2:Great question. You know, you, you say onboard technology to nine out of 10 customers, and the first thing they look at you is they talk about great control. I understand why, because really great control was probably the first thing that came into into the onboard technology space. I think back to my days, you know, running machines when I was a kid, uh, we didn't have any technology on board. And the first things that came along were rotating lasers and we created 2d just by rigging up a laser receiver on the blade and away you go. And then along came 3d machine control. And, and I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, wow, that's why I think everybody gravitates towards great control.
Speaker 1:So the grade control technology does have two functionalities, right? One would be 2d and the other one would be
Speaker 2:3d guidance. Yeah, absolutely. You've got your 2d, you know, for, for very simple designs, you gotta be one meter below this flat ground. You, you bench on the ground, you put in one meter and you dig the one meter it's, it's pretty simple. And then, you know, when you, when you get into more golf course design or, you know, more things where it's a lot more complicated highway building road, building that kind of stuff, where you have ditches and, and that's when you start looking at the 3d side and it's pretty incredible what we can do on machines.
Speaker 1:Kind of funny, because this morning I got a customer calling to make a long story, short customer, but two machines from us in the last couple of years. And he said that now that he knows our technology works for him, he wouldn't go back to work without technology.
Speaker 2:I look at the stuff today, Patrice, and I think back when I was a kid, you know, sitting on my dad's knee when I was eight years old was the first time I got to see a bulldozer. But when I started working for my, for my family business, you know, we didn't have cabs. If you had a canopy, you were lucky, you know, and you were hot in the summer cold in the winter, man. I'll tell ya. First dozer we got with a cab on it. The guys used to fight each other to get in the cab. And I look at the machines today and wow, you know, you've got heated cooled seats, you get heated. So streaming videos, touchscreens, you can get satellite radio for crying out loud. Definitely. You gotta, I got a hookup for your phone, so you can play your own music. It's amazing. You know, you, you find certain operators pushback, they find all kinds of reasons to say, no, no, no, I don't need this. I don't need this. But if you can introduce it to an operator in the right setting and just put it into a simple application that they do every day, I've never seen them after that experience go. Yeah, no, I don't want this. They want more, they want more, more, more like we always kind of joke, great control is like the drug of the construction industry. Right? Like give me more, give me more. I want more,
Speaker 1:You know, it's, it's, it's crazy. Yeah, definitely. And once the customer know about 2d grade control, they ask questions about
Speaker 2:3d grade. Exactly. The operator has basically the entire design right in front of them on the monitor. And the operator knows exactly where they are in real time at all times. And how far they got to get to, you know, dig down to grade or fill up to grade or what they need to do. It's, it's such an empowering tool. It's, it's unbelievable to watch operators take off with it. It's it's
Speaker 1:Pretty good. So there is no more great checker down the ditch.
Speaker 2:What I always say to the operator is great. Control basically puts your great person on the blade or on the bucket. And then, yeah, you don't need to sit there wondering where is that person? If you lose sight of them, are they in behind me? Are they beside me? Can I not see them? You know, you're not worried about that anymore because they're not there and saw a customer one time a couple of years ago. And they had purchased a, an excavator with a grade control system on it. And the operator was, uh, he was okay with it. He wasn't too crazy about it. And then he got into a situation where he was on a job site in the, in the ground conditions. Weren't very good. And he had to excavate to place a manhole structure in the ground. He was able to dig it out, using the grade control and the inspector was there watching and saw what he was doing. And he was able to set that manhole in and backfill it. And when I talked to him about it, he said it saved him probably almost a date because he would have had to dig basically an escape route for a great person to get down there, to check the grade because the sides weren't very stable. So he looked at that and after that moment, he started to really catch on to how this grade control worked and, and, and he started pushing it inside his company and they've bought more machines since, and it's been pretty
Speaker 1:Cool. Awesome. What, what can we say, Brandon, about the accuracy of the 2d or the 3d grade control? Are we talking about half of an inch when it's done properly?
Speaker 2:We were looking with a, with a 2d system, very, very accurate within one to two centimeters with 3d, you're relying more on the GPS signals and there's a little bit of, uh, interference there. So you're, you know, we always talk about like golf ball accuracy. It's like plus or minus an inch and inch and a bit. And honestly I've seen GPS get down to almost millimeter accuracy on a motor grader. It's pretty amazing. But on the norm, you know, you're talking a couple of centimeters, Patrice, you've asked me quite a few questions here. What about your experience? You've been in the role for a long time? You know, you've seen a lot of things in your career and I know you talked to me one time about, I think it was auto route 50, was that right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was not the route 50. And when I started like 15 years ago, uh, we went on the job site when a defy event would GPS system as a demo for a customer and the Oprah. Didn't really quite like the idea of adding machine control on this track, that tractor, cause he's been operating tractor for like, like 35 years or so. And what was cool about it? When the F the operator first sit in the machine, right? He realized that everywhere he went on the job site, he could tell everybody, all right, at that point here, I'm like three inches from final grade. So
Speaker 2:Quarterback now, right? He's the guy calling the plays. He's the guy saying, Hey, here's where we are, guys. We need material here. We need to cut here. We need to fill over there. And he's the guy in charge. So it's an empowering tool, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we started with one machine. We equipped like three other truck type tractors and two excavators at the end of the project, they save like two months worth of work because the ad machine equipped with 3d grade control,
Speaker 2:Amazing the savings. If a contractor doesn't realize it until they really get into it. And then they start to see exactly what it is they can do with this technology.
Speaker 1:So you save on fuel and save on passes.
Speaker 2:The one thing you save on. And that's what I always hated was going back and doing it a second time. Yup. I used to get mad as heck at my guys when they screwed up, you know, they come to me and go, oh man, we're like 20 centimeters low over there. We've got to haul a bunch of material and why? Well, because the great guy screwed up. Oh, awesome. Um, remind me to, you know, not have him back, but you know, with machine control, it's in the cab, it's there. It's, it's incredible. The payback
Speaker 1:Customer here and pull back. Right. He pretends that he only uses like the best final grade operator of track that track. Oh yeah. I got those guys too. And we kind of convinced them to try it. So we wanted to jump psych that was like graded properly and we press automatic or some material on, on like 50 feet. And the blaze was full loaded material. So the customer couldn't believe it, you call it surveyor. And he realized that it was too high by like half of an inch to an inch. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You start translating that into tons of stone that you have to purchase. And it starts to add
Speaker 3:Up extremely fast. Definitely
Speaker 1:This morning, the customer I was talking with, he mentioned also about how much really couldn't work without them. Ah, another technology. Yes, sir. Every time he asked to fill a truck on material, you turn on the Sparrow from his involved computer, which is standard technology. And he knows exactly how much weight he put in his truck. And he told me that sometime he asked you how you would try drivers telling them that he can put another, like three done in,
Speaker 2:But it came out in excavators a few years ago. And honestly, I thought it was going to be huge. And I don't know if you, you experienced the exact same as I did, but when it first came out, customers looked at me and went, what do I care? I've never used it. I load the truck full and I send it out in the road and I looked at the guy and I go, do you know how much is in it? Nah, I don't care really then buckets. Is that your truck? Well, yeah. How was your, a rating with the ministry of, you know, if you've been pulled over for, uh, overweights and stuff like that. Now I know here in Ontario, there's a lot of stuff going on right now with, uh, trucker protests and, and there's acts of weight restrictions and it's a big problem. And there's a lot of trucks driving around out there that are overloaded. There's the overload aspect, which we don't want to do. What about the underloading aspect? Yeah. You know, well, I never under load them and you know, how do you know, um, you know, if you're loading really dry, light topsoil, maybe you can squeeze another half a bucket and pound it into the back of that truck. That's when customers really say, wow, what do I care? I don't want them slowing down to make sure they get the right, you know, exact payload in the truck. Okay, fair enough. But what if you just turn the payload on in the morning and then at the end of the day, you shut the payload off and you know exactly how much material you move that day and they kind of customers' eyes kind of light up. Oh, we can do that. Yeah, absolutely. You can do that. Or what happens? You're on a job site and you get into an area where there's buried stuff. We're not talking nuclear waste here, but you know, you're in a farm site and cleaning up around the barn and there's an old oil spilled up. That's been there for 80 years, a hundred years. And you got to clean that out. Oh, you can define that area. You can dig that out. Use your payload, you know exactly how many tons of material you just pulled out of that hole. Is that a powerful thing for a customer? Maybe a dumb analogy, but I always use it and you know, talking to a customer and they start pushing back on technology. I take a look and I look over and I see what they're driving said, man, that's a nice pickup. You got over there. Oh yeah. That's my new truck, you know, sunroof. And you know, does that thing got cruise control? Oh yeah, man. It's got adaptive cruise control. It's it's awesome. I said, well, yeah. Do you use it every day? Well, no. If I'm in the city or I'm doing this, I'm not using that. But when I need it, it's nice to have. I said, it's kind of like payload. We always get a giggle out of it. And they okay. And I said, Hey, you know what? It's in the machine. If you use it, you use it. If you don't, you don't. But if you need it, it's there. I've put a lot of guys in the seat and they can't believe how simple it is. The first thing we want to do is get a bucket, lift up and kind of stock and wait for
Speaker 1:It to it. And I don't have to do that.
Speaker 2:No, you run it like normal and it'll ding and you'll hear the ding and you know, you've got good weight. It's just automatic. It's pretty
Speaker 1:Awesome. Have you had a chance to look at the lift assist functionality? That's another
Speaker 2:Great one. And it kind of ties to the payload and you know, I've got to, I've got to lift this pipe. Can I lift this pipe? And can I set it down in that trench and stretch out, you got to be an engineer to figure out the calculations, like who the heck can do that with lift assist, you, turn it on. And it's actually telling you when you're going, going to be in trouble or danger of maybe, you know, tipping the machine.
Speaker 1:So as you reach out or reach in the color is like a change it right from green to red.
Speaker 2:And there's arrows on there that tell you, you know, don't go that way, go this way. Right. So it's a really awesome feature, kind of dovetails off a payload. And then it kind of goes into the safety features of the fence.
Speaker 1:That's another great feature to have. If I'm not mistaken, it allows you to define like a roof, a wall in front of you. Yeah. You
Speaker 2:See you're working. Yeah. Beside a live lane of traffic on a road job. And there's a lot of stuff going on. Right. And, and, and we rely on the operator to make sure they don't make any wrong moves with an offense. You don't have to worry about sticking that bucket out and clipping a car or a truck or a person,
Speaker 1:The machine movement. When you at the limit itself, that's
Speaker 2:Right. Automatically stops it. And you cannot power through it. Working under power lines, you know, working inside of a building, you don't want to reach up and hit the, hit the roof structure or whatever. It's not that an operator is not aware. Operators are aware what's going on around them. It's a safety backup. And I was talking to a veteran operator when, when this technology first came out and he was kinda on the fence about it. I don't know if I'd ever use it. And I said, have you ever hit a set of wires? And he kind of smiled and he kind of smirked and he put his head down and he said, well, yeah.
Speaker 1:And also here in Quebec. Right. And if you don't have that offense capability on your machine, you don't get the contract.
Speaker 2:Oh, there it goes. So it's legislated, there's some areas of the Newfoundland they're like that too. I know Newfoundland, hydro, you talk to operators and you kind of explain how it works and they, and they say, you know what? I can see where at the end of the day, it's been a long day. It's been a, maybe a long week and you're looking up and you know, you got to push through that last couple hours and all of a sudden the foreman or the grade person yells at you for something and you, what you pull on the stick and boom, you're into the wires. It can happen. It happens to the best.
Speaker 1:There's so much stuff to look at when you operating an excavator.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, and, and then there's the fatigue issue having that there, with that sense of peace of mind that I know I'm not going to hit those wires. I had an operator, took the front off of one of our calves one time. And I'd tell you, I wasn't very happy with him training operators. You can set up cab avoidance. They cannot under no circumstances. Can they hit the cab with the bucket or the work tool? You talked about the safety aspect in Quebec, you know, government contracts, you know, there's insurance app implications. This is something that you can talk to your insurance company over as well. You get savings on your car insurance. If you drive like a, I'm very careful for that.
Speaker 1:There's also a functionality in the next gen excavators that we call a great assist.
Speaker 2:It protects you from going below grade. And it also fills the bucket automatically. But for someone who's got to get to, got to get to grade, and hasn't got that deep experience level of being able to carry grade assist is going to get them there really quickly. But what about if you're down deep and you, you can't really see the bottom of the bucket if you're underwater and there's a lot of customers that do stuff underwater, you could put the cyst on and boom, there you go. It costs a lot of money to fill back up again. You're just wasting money. You're burning money. You know, Patrice you've been around since, uh, technology was kind of in its infancy stage. What do you see out there from customers
Speaker 1:And the best? And these days that the young fellows, they really jumped into it. They love technology. They want to use it. The older operators, they seem to be like less interested because they've been grading for like 35 years. Yeah. They take a little more convincing,
Speaker 2:Right? They're not the iPad generation. I always find it kind of more of more fun to convert a, an older operator. Let's say because young guys, yeah, they're going to jump on it. They're like, oh, I love technology. I love this blah, blah, blah. The older ones. They look at it as well. I know how to operate. I'm I'm a professional.
Speaker 1:I use what I use that this way for like three to five years. Why do I need this crutch? And, and you know what brand I've noticed that we be older operators. You have to basically take the time and, and, and go on job sites several time to teach him and show them that technology is easy to use. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I went on a site one time and it was an older gentleman and he kicked the door open. He says, I'm telling you right now. I don't know a thing about GPS satellites. I stopped you kind of, kind of threw me a little bit. I stopped. And I stood there and I looked up at the sky for probably, you know, five, 10 seconds. And you finally go the hell are you doing? And it's a lot. I don't know. Cause I don't know anything about GPS satellites either, but I know about grade control on this machine. And if you're interested, I can show you a little bit about it. We don't have to know anything about satellites. They're just way up in the sky going around a million miles an hour. Nobody really knows. And we laughed. Well, you know, I'm not good with computers. I said, yeah, no me either. I said, can you let me ask you this? I said, if you got a remote control for your television at home, yeah. I can get my way through that. Okay. I said, but then you're probably already overqualified on how to run this system within an hour or two. This guy has got a smile on his face and he's like, holy crap. I never thought I'd ever have anything like this. He goes, I might stay on for another five or 10 years. He was excited. He was like a little kid to me. That's success. Right. You know, you've got someone who's into the technology and then they're like, this is awesome. The young guys is awesome too. But when you convert a really seasoned operator and they see the advantages of what this can do for them, make them more efficient, make their company more money. You know, it's incredible. What about camera systems? You know, we go to a 60 cameras. He has 360 degree bird's-eye view, camera, uh, capabilities, and a lot of our machines now. And you know, from a safety aspect, the operator knows exactly what's around that machine. It's, it's unbelievable. And these, these, the views you get out of these displays, it's, it's high Def it's, it's amazing. Back in my day, you looked over your shoulder and you hope you weren't driving over someone. Thank goodness that never happened. But yeah, there was close calls. You know, people get into places where they're not supposed to be. And unfortunately in our industry, there's tragedies that happen. And it's not because somebody, you know, actively thinks I'm going to get in behind that machine. They're not thinking about getting in behind them machine. They're thinking about something else. And they, you know, I've known guys that have had incidents and it's, it messes you up for the rest of your life. You know? So the safety features that we have now, the 360 cameras, it's really incredible. How much have things improved in the last 20, 30 years? Look at your, look at your pickup truck versus what you drove 20 years ago now. Okay? Maybe Patrice, you weren't driving 20 years ago. You were still on a bicycle. But you know, I was driving 20 years ago and I'll tell you my pickup truck. It had wind up windows, not power windows. And it had an AMF M radio. That was it. You know, now you got satellite, you got navigation systems, you get power, heated seat. And it's gone into the heavy equipment too. It's an office. Think about it that way. You're an operator. You're spending eight to 10 hours in an office. You want to be comfortable and I'll tell you the cabs today. They are something, but I'll tell you Patrice, I get reports. Honestly, our customers are using the suites of technologies in our machine about 20% of the time. That's it? Okay. You got two ends of the spectrum here. You've got the companies that have embraced technology. They're at the poker table. They've got all their chips and they're all in. Let's go. And then you got the people over here who are like, Ooh, new way, man. That's just scary stuff. And
Speaker 1:These guys were funny, missed the boat, Brian,
Speaker 2:16, 17 years ago, I got my first Blackberry. The office manager could send me an email on my Blackberry with the change order in the field. I call the engineer right away and talk about the change order. And they were kind of surprised. How'd you know about that? I just set that 20 minutes ago. I adapted because I had two businesses business, but margins are tight. It's very competitive out there. You
Speaker 1:Always have to do mall with lists. Exactly.
Speaker 2:And then what about the operator pool? Not too many of them. No, but it pays well, you can make a lot of money running equipment and there's a lot of people don't want to do it anymore. It's not an easy job. It's a tough job. But I think back to when I started to now, man, if I could run one of these machines, it's a lot nicer machine and
Speaker 1:Strongly believe that technology will, will help the contractor to retain old operators. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2:Absolutely. If you're an operator and you're running the latest and greatest machine with the latest and greatest technology, and you're looked upon as a very valuable member of the team who is quarterbacking the job site, wouldn't you want to be a part of that, that company versus some guy that's on a machine where the air conditioning doesn't work, the windows are broken out of it. The smoke coming into the cab, he got
Speaker 1:No ticket. Now waiting for the surveyor to go by and check grades.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to work there I'd want the new stuff. That's my hope is that people open themselves up and embrace technology,
Speaker 1:Give it a shot, toe. It won't bite
Speaker 2:You. I can guarantee it. You get into it. You are never going back. No. And the thing I love is you watch an operator get into it and they start telling you how they use the technology to solve a problem that came up on the job site. How are we going to do this? And the guy goes, I know how to do that. We can do this, this, this, and this and boom. And everybody's like, wow, that's where it gets really cool.
Speaker 1:And as a supplier, we do have, uh, people that goes out on job site and to help operators to learn and to master technologies.
Speaker 2:Pretty sure that's a kind of your key role. Isn't it? Patrice, aren't you? That gas. It is. And it's exciting, right? When you see a guy's eyes pop open and go, wow. This morning,
Speaker 1:Right? The end conversation I had with the customer is that it couldn't work without great control and building. I
Speaker 2:Think I still got 10 years left in me and I'm pretty excited to see where we're at in five to 10 years, because I know where we've been in the last five to 10 years, it's leaps and bounds. It's unbelievable how this stuff changes. We have self-driving cars now, you know, we have autonomous mining equipment out there. We have the ability to do remote control operating. So we don't put operators into, into bad positions into, into dangerous situations. What's the next step, full autonomy. You know, Patrice, when you, when you start thinking about technology in, in, in equipment and in your mind, what's, what's the easiest way to do that. How do you get an operator on board
Speaker 1:And have everybody sit in the machine and
Speaker 2:Use it? So you got to remove the fear, right? Take the fear out of it. It's
Speaker 1:Unvaluable data that you have right at your fingertips.
Speaker 2:So I guess we've, we've kind of kicked around technology here. Pretty good. Patrice has been a lot of fun chatting with you and a long time, since I've seen you face to face, you know, we've had this, uh, little pandemic thing. I don't know if you've watched the news talking about Brian. Yeah. There's been this like pandemic thing going on. So I look forward to seeing you in person sometime, but, but, uh, this was a lot of fun. Uh, thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for your time, Brian. And we'll talk soon.[inaudible]
Speaker 4:Thanks
Speaker 2:For listening to this episode of the building tomorrow podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Please be sure to subscribe so that you can join us again for more info and tips from our specialists. Check out our website and the building tomorrow blog. See you next time.