Berco uses bauma 2019 to unveil new digital solutions

First published at bauma - April 12, 2019

Berco is launching digital solutions aimed at improving its undercarriage lifetime and reducing operational cost per hour for customers. Piero Bruno, Berco CEO, said digitalisation is a key pillar of the undercarriage specialist’s product development strategy: “Given that undercarriages are a huge expense for tracked machinery owners, we believe that digital solutions can offer our customers more transparency and efficiency, as data analysis allows for informed decision making.”

Berco is launching Bopis Life, a cloud based undercarriage measuring solution that allows its customers to have immediate diagnosis of its undercarriage lifetime and performance and be able to improve maintenance costs and stocks.

Wear data is collected in the field using an ultrasonic device and uploaded to the platform via Berco’s dedicated app. The data will also be used for Berco’s research and development purposes in its quest to find new technological solutions for improving undercarriage performance in the field. “This is a solution set to bring transparency to our customers, allowing them to have more knowledge and better partnership with us,” said Bruno.

To guarantee better performance on the lubricated track chains, Berco has also developed a digitalised manufacturing system that guarantees better quality and reliability, aiming less friction on mechanical components and less wear. The digital assembling system acquires and manages the assembly data during the process and establishes the optimal closing point of the section being assembled (ongoing control).

The new system ensures the right assembly process, avoiding situations of excess or a lack of press fit. This is made possible by a mathematical algorithm that has been developed in collaboration with Ferrara University to guarantee the right press-in point. The manual setup of the control system has been totally eliminated. A standard work recipe with machine work parameters is automatically loaded at the start of production by scanning a barcode with the type of chain to be assembled.

Consequently, the setup time is reduced and the human intervention during production is not needed. “With the digital assembling method, we ensure maximum quality and reliability of the products. The process becomes repeatable by a standard assembly procedure and is not man-dependent. We aim to bring to our undercarriage business a data-driven mindset of our automotive business, focusing on transparency and better performance,” concluded Bruno.

Stand A5 449