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In chemistry, a catalyst brings about a change, often increasing the rate of change or the reaction. In off-road equipment, one catalyst that's caused a big reaction is emissions regulations. As the requirements become more stringent with every tier, they challenge off-highway OEMs and their engineers to look for new approaches to component, system and overall equipment design. When you add in customer requests for lower operating costs and an increased ability to get more done in a day, OEM designers get creative. The new 764 high speed dozer (HSD) from John Deere and the Caterpillar D7E electric drive track-type tractor are excellent examples of innovative machines. Both were introduced at the recent ConExpo/Con-Agg show in Las Vegas.

Listening to customers

Both Deere and Caterpillar have a formal means of obtaining customer input on new equipment.

"In working with our customers through our Customer Advocate Group (CAG) process, Deere was able to identify a gap in the ability of current machine forms," Scott Bayless, product consultant for Deere, explains. The result is what Deere calls its first new machine form in decades.

According to Bayless, motor graders can work at a relatively fast speed. They are quite mobile and because of their rubber tires, disturb the finished grade very little. "There are some challenges that face a motor grader, however," he says. "They usually require a very skilled operator, they are somewhat limited to ground conditions due to a relatively high ground pressure, and they have a large turning radius limiting their ability to maneuver tight areas."

He continues, "Track crawlers have the ability to operate in a wider array of conditions due to a much lower ground pressure. They typically don't require as much skill to operate and are very maneuverable in tight areas. Their downsides are their lack of mobility, lower grading speeds, limited blade visibility and poor ride quality due to the steel undercarriage."

Deere's solution is the 764 HSD, which adapts many of the desirable features of both the motor grader and the steel-track crawler and combines them into one versatile machine with rubber tracks.

Caterpillar heard the "Voice of the Customer" (its formal program), too. "We put together an advanced power train team to look where technologies were headed and we evaluated many different power train options," Mike Betz, engineering manager in the Cat Heavy Construction and Mining Group, says. "After an in-depth study and analytical modeling, we concluded an electric-drive powertrain would fulfill the need for being highly efficient and, at the same time, give good operator control. Future emissions regulations were a catalyst in our studies, but we were mainly responding to the customers' desire for lower operating costs."

Involving customers throughout

Both companies involved customers while developing their new machines.

John Deere's Bayless recalls, "We used a core group of innovative, forward-thinking customers who are always looking for better ways to improve their competitive edge. These customers were brought in throughout the process of developing the 764. Once we had working prototypes, we sent the machines to their jobs to evaluate them in real-world situations around the country. It was on customer jobsites that we validated that the HSD was the machine form that could provide solutions to our customers."

Caterpillar wanted to keep quiet about what it was developing, but it used some customer focus groups. "We worked with our dealer advisory group, but kept the whole program somewhat secret because it was a big move for us," Betz notes. "We utilized benchmarking where customers ran both our current and competitors' machines."

Much of the D7E's development was kept internal until recently. "Our own expert operators have been evaluating machines all along," Betz says. "In February, we had dealer demo operators evaluate the tractor. In March, following the official announcement at ConExpo, we started building units for customer sites. We did benchmarking in May with customers on these units, and they are headed to customers now."