Game changer digitalisation: from ego to ecosystem

Aristotle once said that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the age of digital transformation, this insight takes on a whole new dimension. ‘The focus is no longer just on the technological excellence of devices and machines. Today, we focus much more on the entire value chain for customers and users of Liebherr solutions. It’s all about concrete, measurable added value that comes from digitalisation’, explains Stephen Albrecht, managing director at Liebherr-International AG. Ever better opportunities for data capture and analysis would pave the way to this. ‘Augmented products with application scenarios that can be experienced and optimised digitally enable this added value to be seen in a different, much brighter light. And, not least, they can also contribute to decarbonisation.’

Thinking about technology and measurable added value for customers from such a holistic perspective is second nature to Marcel Flir. The skilled environmental and process engineer with a qualification in industrial engineering spent several years building the digital business at the Liebherr site in Nenzing (Austria) and was also responsible for leading the product management for digital solutions there. He is now head of digital business and strategy for the Liebherr Group. The focus here is on identifying and exploiting synergies in Liebherr’s digital solutions, which extend across all 13 product segments and all parts of the customer journey. This includes, for example, operational planning, maintenance management, digital inventory management, smart home integration and organisational matters.

For Liebherr, digitalisation is not a new trend that is only just being discovered and inspiring innovation. Development engineers at Liebherr have been working on how to capture, record and transfer machine and process data since the mid-1990s in order to use this data for greater product optimisation and emissions reductions. ‘Back then, the time of user-friendly data management hadn’t arrived yet – with 56k modems, the stream of data first had to be painstakingly threaded through a digital eye of a needle’, says Marcel Flir. At the same time, remote maintenance and remote access to controls and components were quickly gaining importance for Liebherr devices, which are exported all over the world, and there was demand for relevant solutions.

Today, specialists at Liebherr work on digital innovations across all product segments – and on connecting the constantly evolving options, machines, refrigerators or components to the associated systems. ‘We have several hundred digital solutions in the field, from APIs to IoT solutions and training simulators – and more are on the way of course’, says Stephen Albrecht. The development departments in the Liebherr product segments shouldn’t need to completely rework the relevant digital basis every time. ‘We seek out and utilise synergies wherever they make sense. To do this, we call on proven standards and system interfaces – with data security, data governance and cybersecurity in general playing a central role, along with the use of established modules. Overall, we drastically reduce the time to market, while also offering our customers ISO 27001-certified digital solutions and services’, explains Marcel Flir.

‘It depends greatly on how we handle data ourselves’, says Stephen Albrecht. He describes how the focus is always on ‘improving the customers’ processes and the efficiency of how they use their products’. This includes, for example, preparing ways to integrate partner data into the digital ecosystem or to deal with different legal frameworks around the world in the context of digitalisation. ‘It would be wonderful for data to already be interoperable and useable across manufacturers’, says Flir. This demands a certain mindset.

‘Going it alone is a thing of the past. Customers, manufacturers, associations and providers of solutions are all in the same boat when it comes to adding value and achieving the decarbonisation targets that are now needed. We are bringing a real paradigm shift to the table: out with the egosystem, in with the ecosystem’, sums up Marcel Flir. ‘So things that belong together grow together.’

One example of this holistic perspective is the MyLiebherr customer portal. ‘It is the main gateway to Liebherr’s digital world’, says Marcel Flir. ‘MyLiebherr started out as a spare parts portal. We then gradually expanded the application fields in an iterative process and so created a hub that now has over 125,000 active users and over 60,000 customers.’ Users can now book online training for professionals or buy licences or spare parts. It also offers applications for planning crane lifts, site monitoring and integrated functionalities for machine and maintenance information. In other words, MyLiebherr enables users to access the entire digital world of Liebherr with just a few clicks.

The customer portal not only offers comprehensive services, but is also a building block for enhancing Liebherr products and services with further functionalities as part of end-to-end digitalisation. Stephen Albrecht explains: ‘Because in technology development we have everything on our plan – from the idea, production and service through to discontinuation and recycling – and this creates many opportunities for us. For example, the data that a technician records at one site when reconditioning used components can be made available to development engineers at another site. Digitalisation can therefore help us to make our products even more robust and efficient right from the development stage.’

Supporting customers as a partner in digital transformation and therefore also creating prospects with a view to sustainable development, is also useful in the development of drivetrains, for example.

‘Electrification is not about transferring the performance capability of a diesel unit to an electric drive one-to-one’, says Stephen Albrecht. He believes it is much more important to find out what the customer is actually using their machine for in day-to-day operations. ‘As we are able to capture real operating data and transmit it from our telematics units, we can now optimise the design of the battery and electric powertrain to meet customer requirements. And we don’t always need to stick 100 % to the performance parameters that were originally applied to a conventional drive.’ Another advantage: by incorporating such user-specific data, the Liebherr digital experts and the development engineers are also helping to accelerate the introduction of CO₂-optimised machines.