This was the slogan for the Forestry Management Specialists Conference 2019 that took place on 26 April at the PALFINGER WORLD in Lengau, which itself is remarkable in many respects.
Attendees at the event not only included industry insiders such as Peter Konrad, the President of the Austrian Association of Forest Entrepreneurs, Christian Fuchs, chairman of the trade association for commercial service providers and Thomas Kirchner, the managing director of the trade association for commercial service providers, but also Andreas Klauser, CEO of PALFINGER AG and Roman Strobl, head of Sales Training at PALFINGER AG. By attending this event, they underlined the importance of patronage in an industry that – like many others – is in a state of upheaval due to price and time pressures, increasing complexity and expensive downtime and repair times.
While our CEO Andreas Klauser aroused widespread interest by speaking about actively practising sustainability in an age of digitalisation, Christian Fuchs used his opening remarks to highlight the importance of “creating the right impetus for the future at the right time” for the 3,700 member companies in Austria.
What attributes will a good driver need to have in the future? Who will still feel comfortable and at home in the Epsilon Masterdrive of the future – regardless of the weather? And to what extent will the crane already be controlled via Virtual Drive in the near future, allowing the unit – including the crane boom tip – to be controlled directly from the truck cab without the driver needing to leave the cab in the process? A lot of questions. During a factory tour, the conference guests had the opportunity to try out the new PALFINGER Epsilon and discover how intuitively and efficiently the forest crane of the future can be operated with Smart Control. The adaptive gripper tip controller delivers maximum precision and power to every last linkage in the crane’s arm.
Without doubt the absolute highlight of the specialist conference was the visit to PALFINGER WORLD, where digital solutions such as the Smart Boom Control crane boom tip control for loader cranes, E-joystick control, Intelligent Loading Assist and self-driving tractors were showcased at close quarters – in some cases like in a 3D cinema with outsized wall and floor projections.
By the end of the day, everybody was in agreement: “This could be the future!”
