HANOVER, Germany—Continental A.G., which began ramping up its OTR tire segment six years ago, is moving deeper into the construction and mining sectors with a suite of digital tools designed to help improve safety and productivity on job sites.
"The efficient and safe construction site of the future will not operate without digital mortar," according to Hans-Juergen Duensing, a member of the Continental executive board whose responsibilities include the off-highway sector.
"Connected smart construction vehicles and machines are among the basic elements ensuring faster, safer and, above all, more efficient operations on construction sites," he said, touting Continental as "one-stop shop" for complete system solutions, starting with tires and air springs and sensors that monitor them, then moving to electronic systems, software programming and connectivity solutions to process the data, right through to fleet management software and the driver's workplace where these data are processed and displayed.
"Construction sites are the starting point for future mobility," Duensing said. "Roads have to be constructed, railway tracks laid, agricultural and forest tracks built and factories erected. The construction and mining sectors are therefore key industries and an indispensable part of our world now and in the future."
Continental will be exhibiting its innovations, technological developments and services at Bauma, an international trade show for construction machinery, in Munich from April 8-14.
Among the service and consultancy concepts Continental will be demonstrating are those that allow drivers, fleet managers and operators of construction sites, quarries and sand and gravel pits to increase their productivity measurably.
The firm will debut its ContiLogger consultancy concept, which the company said is designed to bring together tires, hardware, software and data into an "innovative service approach." ContiLogger uses a range of components in order to capture data such as tire pressure, tire temperature and vehicle and topographic data in real-life applications.
With the aid of the data collected, which either undergoes one-off analysis by the Continental field engineer or is digitally captured continuously by the user, recommendations can be developed for optimized route management, loading or tire use. Consequently, users not only can identify whether a tire is being overloaded or underused and thus extend tire lifetime, but also can adapt operational processes so that overall productivity is increased.
At Bauma, Continental is exhibiting its growing tire portfolio, including the EM-Master for wheel loaders, RDT-Master for rigid dump trucks and Conti CrossTrac for trucks, for different applications on construction sites, in quarries and in sand and gravel pits.
Conti also will be demonstrating its smart air spring development, which provides reliable information on pressure, temperature and height through the use of an integrated sensor system.
Other systems being developed include:
- HD digital camera system, consisting of four-megapixel cameras and a control unit, to help drivers avoid accidents and incidents;
- Modular driver's workplace, which features intuitive usability and total freedom when configuring and programming the various displays and control panels; and
- Low-NOx and efficient emissions technology for clean mobility.