At its year-end press event, Caterpillar announced updates to its M-Series medium wheel loaders. Cat says the upgrades, which are consistent with its recent trend toward short-cycle rollouts of new features, tackle not only machine-specific productivity, but overall site productivity as well.
The updates apply to the 950M, 966M, 972M, 966M XE, 972M XE, 980M, and 982M.
The 2017 update focuses on optimizing customer profitability and enhancing job site safety, as well as improving operator comfort and serviceability, says Jason Hagedorn, product application specialist. “We are focusing really heavily on technology and making use of a world of data that is coming from our machines from on board sensors, etc.,” he adds. “We truly wanted to make use of all the information coming from the machine.”
Cat Payload Technologies are designed to increase production and jobsite efficiency by ensuring haul vehicles are loaded to exact specifications, for full utilization of equipment and lower operating costs. For 2017, the capabilities of the Cat Production Measurement system have been expanded to include the Advanced Productivity app, an optional web-based tool available through VisionLink that helps operators visualize key performance indicators (KPI).
Through the use of application profiling—which shows what type of work the loader is doing—and cycle segmentation—which defines details such as how long the loader has been doing a task, how far it has traveled, how much fuel it has used, etc.—Advanced Productivity collects data from the machine’s onboard sensor array and processes it through algorithms to determine what, where, when, and how the machine performs specific tasks.
Cat targets specific goals with Advanced Productivity, including allowing the operator to:
