Schwing Stetter India’s focus is on providing cloud service and leveraging the usage of iot for all its range of equipment

As per a research report the increasing focus on infrastructure and development of automation in the construction and manufacturing processes had a significant impact on the market growth. Tell us how has it positively impacted the industry?

The pandemic has Changed the way we have been doing business in this sector. An intensive manpower oriented industry, had to look for alternative ways of productivity and hence more automation, AI and telematics embedded equipment has become the new normal. Schwing Stetter India  has been marketing Equipment such as Batching plants, Boom Pumps, Excavators and SLM to name a few with Automated production In Concrete production and Placement process since long back, but have found increased demand from the Customers , which is a positive impact on the industry , prompting to innovate further in this field.

How has increased road development programmes undertaken by state and central government benefitted the construction equipment market, has it resulted into significant growth? Tell us more about the same?

The Government of India, the ministry of finance and ministry of road transport and highways jointly have announced various measures to bring the economy back on track. Besides, many of ICEMA’s demand to revive the Construction Equipment industry were addressed by actions like special packages for MSME’s, special packages for NBFC’s redefining the NPS, reduction in the interest costs, release of pending payments for the contractors, moratorium on loans, additional working capital benefit for MSME’s, return of bank guarantee for the completed project to improve the liquidity, etc is sure to help the revival of the industry soon.

Of lately it has been observed that construction-equipment manufacturers have opted for electric and hybrid vehicles over the traditional hydraulic and mechanical ones. Is it proving to be cost-effective?

Electric powered equipment , have been there in the field since long back such as Excavators, Shotcrete pumps, Transit mixers Etc.,. But their deployment had restricted to fields such as Mines and Tunnel Constructions where the Equipment Movement has been nil or minimum. But as the technology improves , we will see a Shift towards alternate power for equipment operation in the near future.

The renting or leasing of construction equipment has been on the rise, owing to the equipment cost and also the cost of the maintenance process. What are the reasons according to you? The scope of its business in near future!

Renting and leasing of equipment ( hiring Sector) has seen a exponential rise in the past few years. Mostly large construction companies who would like to bring down capital equipment inventory opt for it. This is win-win Sitautionfor all the stake holders including the equipment manufactures. In fact we , design and market products suitable for the Hiring Segment. This Global practice in=s trending and will be add to growth of Equipment population and business.

Has the investment in new technologies by renting companies have resulted in the growing demand for advanced and upgraded machinery fleet?

Technological advances are required for increasing the productivity, reducing downtime and managing the fleet in a cloud based environment. With these in mind, the projects that we are working presently are related to productivity increase by providing automatic levelling system, increasing the forward and reverse speeds in XCMG Wheel Loaders, Automatic Batching Systems in our SLMs and remote Access of production data from centralized location, GPS enabled fleet management in Concrete Transit mixers are already in Use. For reducing the downtime, use of high quality components after several hours of field trials and positioning our service engineers in clusters and also maintaining the spares stocks in our cluster branches for attending the service calls immediately.

Do you think digitalization, connectivity, and automation are driving the development forward, leaving a substantial impact on construction projects? Your say on this!

The Global pandemic has created a new normal for the people to live with the pandemic. It is more true in case of corporates and manufacturing units. So we are moving towards more automation, digitalization which will help us to manage new norms effectively. Besides, we have already identified customers pain points created by absence of labors at the construction site and we will be launching new products to improve the productivity at the construction sites.

Schwing Stetter India analyses each customer’s requirement and guides the customer to opt for equipment that would suffice the needs of concreting, from the wide range available. We are the first to have an in-house electronics and automation department, being the crux of the entire ecosystem. There are different models of control systems available and it is designed based on the capacity of the batching plant to adopt both commercial and feature wise benefits and we consistently work on delivering products that are user friendly and robust. We are proud to say that we have the best in-house team for both panel building and software development. Every customization is done entirely based on the customer’s requirements. So far, we have supplied more then 40,000 + concreting units overall in different product ranges across the country. Now one of the challenges that we faced in current industrial revolution is in digitalizing the supplied equipment for the customer to attain the industries 4.0 concept. InfraIoT was thus created which is linked to our concreting machinery. The key motto behind this project is to get the performance detail in dashboard at anytime and anywhere to gauge the machine efficiency, utilization and case study, the cycle time and also to avoid major breakdowns.

Presently, Schwing Stetter India’s focus is on providing cloud service and leveraging the usage of IoT for all its range of equipment. As of now these IoT features has been provided to some of the corporate customers and we are still working to make it available for all the customers. With this technology, the efficiency, utilization and proactive maintenance of the equipment can be done effectively. Still there are some challenges that we face due to lack of resource and infrastructure at some of the customer’s site. Still there are places where our equipment reaches but the network does not.

The data captured are segregated to identify the process related analytical data on equipment performance, productivity related analytical data and the process related helps to find the halt in delay during operation. The equipment performance and productivity related data helps to monitor the key parameters that leads to machine break down and also to evaluate the life time of components. Furthermore, we are planning to introduce component compression between various similar component used for different types of plants.

Which Products are proving to be major demand drivers, revenue generators for the construction equipment companies?

While there is general Uptrend in requirement for Road Construction Equipment Such as Motor graders, Wheel Loaders, and Excavators, and Compactors , the RMC Sector fueled by  equipment Such as Batching plants, Transit Mixers and BOOM Pumps see a Consistent rise in demand and will be part of the major product portfolio, especially the Boom pumps. We see a Tremendous Potential in the SLM Market . This is mainly due to the growing number of Small projects  Such as  rural roads projects being awarded. Other than these, rural irrigation plans and road-connectivity projects will also be key factors for a boom in the earthmoving industry. We expect at least 20% growth year on year for the next 5 years.

What futuristic technical innovations will be seen in construction equipment in near future to fast-track big-ticket construction, infrastructure and related projects in India?

Centralized control and Operation of Equipment with remote trouble shooting of Equipment are becoming more and more the Standard norm. Customers who are now more tech savvy are looking for Automated, IOT enabled equipment , to reduce the dependency on Manpower and lesser downtime. Schwing Stetter India & its R&D department are always Striving to offer futuristic products and will continue to do So.