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changed very slowly, so there was little incentive for a customer to upgradeto newer machines.In the past customers tended to keep a machine for its complete usefullife, so the second hand market never developed. Now, as the pace of product development increases andwith the tremendous size of the construction equipment industry in China a second hand market fordomestic machines is starting to evolve. As this develops, there will be less opportunity for importedsecond hand machines in China.”“Following on from this, Contractors World is very safety conscious and will not associate itself with anyunsafe practice - even if legal. For instance, in many markets, items such as seat belt for operators andreversing alarms are compulsory in others they are not required. Where these are not mandatory, somemanufacturers do not fit. I think this is misguided cost saving - potentially putting lives at risk. What isLiuGong’s policy - to promote safety by providing safe equipment, training, etc or to simply comply withbasic safety requirements?”“We would agree that this is misguided cost thinking. LiuGong believes firmly in providing the safestequipment possible. At a very minimum we will always meet legal requirements for whatever market wesell into. We also continually do FMEAs (failure modes and effects analysis) and other assessments todetermine what features we should provide on our machines.We adjust machine configurations, and also someoptions to provide what we feel are safe machines.However, we can put all the features in the world onmachines, but if customers do not use them, theyadd nothing to safety, so training and customereducation are some of the biggest areas where weare working to improve machine safety.”“Many markets are demanding ever more sophisticatedequipment that integrate with engineering departmentsfor increased productivity - GPS, laser technology, realtimeelectronic reporting of machine functions, loads,etc. as we move ever closer to a wireless and paperlesssociety. “Customer don't always know what they need untilthey are shown just what can be done. Is LiuGongintending to be a pioneer in this area or simply react inresponse to customer demands? (i.e. on-board weighingsystems for wheel loaders; automated trenching/returnto-digon excavators, etc.) Do you have a technologypartner?”Hydraulic excavators such as this top of the range suchas this 936LC together with wheel loader and compactorsare the driving force of LiuGong’s export development.“New technologies are good, providing that theyactually provide a customer benefit; they are easy foroperators to understand and use; their added cost iseconomically sensible, and the reliability of such features is high enough to meet LiuGong’s standards.We will not introduce any technology unless the above four conditions can be met. In some cases we havetechnology partners, such as for GPS systems. In other areas we are developing technology ourselves.For example, we have developed our own electronic controller for our excavators. This gives us theindependence to tailor features of control exactly to our machines. We are investing quite a lot into thistype of research, and our New Technologies R&D group is the fastest growing area in all of R&D, and soonwill be the largest R&D group at LiuGong.LiuGong will work to satisfy our customer requirements, sometimes by adopting technology alreadyavailable, but also, and more and more in the future we will be providing innovative features developed inour own laboratories, but once again, I mention – we will not introduce any new technology until we aresatisfied it will benefit our customers, and confident in its reliability.”“The past decade has seen a rapid demand for smaller, more compact machines - mini-excavators,compact loaders, etc. It has also seen a demand for the ultra-large excavators and loaders for mining andquarrying applications. What direction is LiuGong intending to take its product line . . and will it begin tooffer the full range of product globally?”“LiuGong’s growth plans are quite aggressive, and we intend to increase both the size and number ofproduct lines and models in the future. We already offer the largest wheel loader manufactured in Chinathe model 899 at 525 hp and 6.4 m³ bucket capacity, and are developing excavators and other products towork with the large wheel loader in mining applications.At the same time, the industry in China is beginning to change. Historically the market has been all aboutinfrastructure growth and development. This will continue for some time, but the repair industry is startingContractors World Vol 1 No 9Page 15