Another CONEXPO is in the books, so we look back at the cranes, the companies and the people that made this year’s tradeshow such an exciting event.
Las Vegas was the center of the lifting world for one week in March. More specifically — our booth at CONEXPO was the most exciting place to be for any company that considers cranes to be an essential tool to the progress of civilization.
Historically, CONEXPO has been a marquee event for Manitowoc and our strong crane brands. This year’s edition of the show was no exception. We introduced six new cranes to the industry, and four others made their North American debuts. In all we had 10 cranes on display, and you can read a roundup of those new cranes here. We also launched the Potain MDT 569 during the event, and while this crane wasn’t at the booth, you will soon be able to check it out in person when units begin shipping in 2020.
For a real change of pace, we launched one crane “virtually”: the Grove GMK6400-1. Guests at our pavilion were able to examine this crane in full 360° through custom virtual reality goggles. If you’re quick enough, you can spot our VR set up in this video wrap-up of the first day of CONEXPO. In fact, we encourage you to head over to Manitowoc’s YouTube channel, where you can see lots of videos direct from Las Vegas, including four videos that summarize what each of our product lines introduced during the event Manitowoc, Potain, Grove and National Crane.
The pace of our new crane launches is a direct result of our improved product development cycle under The Manitowoc Way. If you’ll recall, it was only a year ago that we launched six new cranes at bauma 2019 — that’s 14 new cranes in 12 months!
By increasing innovation and velocity through all aspects of our business, we’re able to design, engineer and produce new cranes faster than ever before. Most importantly, these are cranes with the features and technology that our customers want and need — they are the tools lifting companies need to grow their own businesses.
We’re happy to say that many of these companies came to visit our booth during CONEXPO. It was a family reunion of sorts for the industry, with our customers and dealers stopping by to celebrate new purchases, commemorate successful partnerships and in some cases, receive awards from Manitowoc for their blockbuster growth. We want to thank everyone that spent this time with us. We were able to pop champagne with many of you, adding a bit of fun to the serious business of CONEXPO.
Speaking of fun, inside the booth, we had a full-fledged crane simulator, where guests could try out our CCS Crane Control System, operating either a virtual Manitowoc crawler crane or Grove rough-terrain crane. It was a great example of how operators can learn CCS for one type of crane and then take that knowledge and productivity over to operate another crane.
We now have CCS across Manitowoc, Grove, Potain and National Crane models, which really cuts down on training for operators while maximizing fleet efficiency. It was also a lot of fun for people to try out their operating skills in a low-stakes scenario.
CONEXPO 2020 provided us a great opportunity to show off technologies like CCS — and we encourage you to read all about them in our new crane roundup — but it was also a chance to hear your direct input on the designs and functionality you want in future cranes.
So many of our cranes already provide best-in-class performance, capability and efficiency, but that doesn't mean there will be a slowdown of The Manitowoc Way anytime soon. We already have our sights on CONEXPO 2023 … THE REVOLUTION IS REAL!
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