At Cargotec, most engineering hours are spent finding better solutions for meeting our customers’ needs. The primary focus is on reducing the amount of energy needed during our products’ lifecycles. Energy saving requires a multidisciplinary approach, a key enabler being the use of intelligent information technology. Whether controlling individual machines or managing entire fleets, this is a clear prerequisite. Better data from our products, their immediate environment and the process they are performing provides input for developing new and improved products and services. This has become even more relevant as sensors, data communication and computing power have developed.
In 2011, we continued to increase our research and development presence in emerging markets, in order to gain a better understanding of the market and access local competencies. The operations of a common engineering centre, established in Pune, India, in 2008, were expanded and moved to a larger, modern facility. We also continued to harness internal knowledge by creating a common language across our engineering community, harmonising processes and making decisions on locations in which certain competences will be centralised.
Cargotec is fully aware that relevant technological knowledge complementary to its own lies within universities, research institutions and partner companies. For this reason, Cargotec has been active in the Finnish Metals and Engineering Competence Cluster (FIMECC), an open innovation platform deepening collaboration between these various organisations, since its foundation. Examples of the results of such cooperation include a parametric and configurable hatch cover model developed by Cargotec in 2011. This reduces the design lead time to a fraction of the previously required eight weeks. Cargotec is also active in various programmes covering energy efficiency, use of information technology and future services. Located close to local universities, our new competence centres in Tampere and Singapore offer new opportunities to expand this way of operating.
The open innovation concept can be applied just as easily to our customers’ industries. A good example of this is the Port 2060 initiative – a portal through which a wide range of experts can share their visionary ideas on the ports of the future. This provides us with excellent raw material for future development.
Cargotec's research and development