Construction equipment leaders are reassessing their operating model
The construction equipment industry is facing sustained pressure across operations: supply chain instability, evolving emissions and safety regulations, and rising expectations for machine uptime... all these factors are changing how manufacturers plan, build, and support products.
At the same time, product complexity is increasing. Electrification programs, autonomous features, and connected capabilities are moving forward alongside existing product lines and long-established engineering environments.
This creates real and immediate operational challenges. These pressures show up in day-to-day work. Many organizations are dealing with:
- Product data spread across teams, suppliers, and multiple systems
- Gaps between engineering, manufacturing, and service teams
- Manual processes used to move information between systems
- Limited traceability from design through service history
- Heavy reliance on individual experience rather than shared, connected data
The result is slower response to change, higher operational risk, and missed opportunities to improve equipment performance across its lifecycle.
The focus for many leaders today is how to address these challenges in a way that supports current operations and prepares the business for continued change.
45-50%
of engineering time is spent seeking, preparing, or recreating data rather than designing
45%
of product launches are delayed due to lack of coordination
87%
of engineering leaders say it takes hours to days to track down a single design decision
The world's most complex products are already being built this way.
Volvo CE is an indicator of where the industry is heading, and how manufacturers that invest in lifecycle connectivity are pulling ahead of those still managing complexity manually.
The team chose to adopt Windchill as its information backbone, establishing a unified digital thread that connects engineering, manufacturing, and service teams.
The outcomes
- Up to 50% reduction in late-stage design changes
- Up to 30% decrease in the cost of poor quality
- Up to 70% efficiency gain in work instruction quality
- Faster time-to-market as product complexity continued to grow