Livermore, Calif. – August 11, 2011 – The Wall Street Journal, one of the world’s most prestigious publications, recently examined remote asset management technology for the construction industry that not only monitors how machines are being used (and sometimes abused) but also can help slash energy costs, and determine machine location as well as prevent theft.
Topcon was listed as a company that develops and sells the technology and monitoring services to the equipment manufacturers and directly to equipment owners.
Heavy equipment manufacturers — including Gomaco, Komatsu, John Deere, Caterpillar and Case New Holland, among others — are installing more of the monitoring devices using wireless communications and GPS technology to gather and transmit the data from as close as a job site office to as far away as the other side of the world.
Topcon has two distinct information collection, detection and analysis systems: Topcon Tierra and SiteLINK 3D.
SiteLINK 3D is a real-time, advanced, localized communications management system for its 3D machine control line of products. With Topcon Tierra, a company has available data via a web portal on every machine in a fleet on every job site regardless of locations.
Ray O’Connor, president and CEO of Topcon Positioning Systems (TPS), said, “With SiteLINK 3D and Topcon Tierra technology, a company has control over time, control over productivity of machines and their operators, and control over data, from first cut to project analysis.”
Taking one simple function of a remote asset management system – monitoring machine idle time – can save a company thousands of dollars a year in fuel costs, a major consideration when fuel costs are high, as well as reduce emissions for a positive environmental impact.
Manufacturers are constantly coming up with ways to use data gathered by asset management systems like SiteLINK 3D and Topcon Tierra, not the least of which, O’Connor said, is to “monitor an operator and how he handles his machine and to literally improve the operators’ behavior to maximize machine efficiency and reduce costs and increase a company’s profit.”
About Topcon Positioning Systems
Topcon Positioning Systems, Inc. (TPS) designs and manufactures precise positioning products and solutions for the global surveying, construction, agriculture, civil engineering, mapping and GIS, asset management and mobile control markets. TPS’ parent company, Topcon Corporation (Tokyo Stock Exchange – 7732), was founded in 1932.