“Now that the machine guidance and control technology is pretty much standard, we see a lot more adoption,” said John Downey, senior director sales, EMEA at Topcon Europe Positioning.
The company’s systems can show which machine is productive and whether a job a job is on schedule – for example, where all the haul trucks are lined up, or where more excavators are needed. “Now we can see this digitally. This is something we didn’t know in the past,” said Downey.
“Now you can get a report every hour, every day, every week, from every part of a project. Every machine becomes a sensor on site. You can see if someone is getting behind schedule.”
“Now we want to connect all the machines and start bringing the data and get real-time information from the machines, so we can weigh each bucket from the excavator, for example.
“Margins are small these days. Everyone wants to see where their money is going.”