Wirtgen Group Technology Days 2024

Wirtgen Group Technology Days 2024

Kleemann Plays Host to the International Industry Get-Together:

Digitalization and sustainability were the focal points of this year’s Wirtgen Group Technology Days

2,700 guests from more than 100 countries responded to the invitation to visit the Wirtgen Group Technology Days 2024 in Göppingen. The overarching themes of the two-day event at the headquarters site of Kleemann GmbH were digitalization and sustainability. True to the motto “Smarter. Safer. More Sustainable.” the company group demonstrated products and technologies developed to enable the successful realization of construction projects.

The Wirtgen Group impressed the professionals attending the event with numerous innovative systems and solutions, including eleven world premieres, and a clear vision for the future of road construction. It showed that the new developments are a response to the pressing challenges of our times. “Innovation is in our genes. As we are aware from the feedback we receive from our customers, there is increasing demand for smarter, safer, and more sustainable solutions in markets around the globe. We have concentrated our efforts on this, and can now present state-of-the-art machine technologies and digital solutions with which we support and assist our customers in all phases of the digital transformation. At the same time, we attach great importance to holistic solutions for their construction projects – from the planning phase through to documentation and analysis,” says Dr. Volker Knickel, CEO of the Wirtgen Group. The motto of the event – “Smarter. Safer. More Sustainable.” – succinctly describes this road map for the future.

Portrait

“I come here because I get to see all the manufacturers in one place, because there’s lots of new things to discover, and because I meet a lot of people who work in the countries connected with my job. It’s a real industry get-together.”

Benjamin Knell, Director of Supply Chain at IZNAG GmbH

The Wirtgen Group presented no fewer than eleven world premieres, including the Dash 5 upgrade for the most successful road paver model, the Vögele SUPER 1800-5i.

Machine exhibition with 11 world premieres

With around 70 exhibits for a range of different application scenarios, Wirtgen, Vögele, Hamm, Kleemann, Benninghoven, Ciber, and John Deere showed the concrete solutions with which they will support the industry on their journey to digitalized and sustainable road construction and materials processing.

Portrait

“We’re a family concern with around 250 employees, and we just bought ourselves a new Ciber asphalt mixing plant. The plant we’ve been using up to now isn’t all that environmentally-friendly, but the Ciber 150-ton plant definitely is.”

Nicholas and Andre Gordon, Directors of Asphaltic Concrete (Jamaica)

Portrait

“We came especially to take a closer look at the new stabilizer with the Rock Crusher. It’s something we’ve been looking for for a long while and – hey! – here it is.”

Company owner Javier Perales Cervera and Carlos Perez, responsible for stabilization at Empiesa (Spain)

Portrait

“We already have three HD 10e electric rollers and recently ordered another three. Why? Because sustainability is a really big issue in the Netherlands. We’re miles ahead of a lot of other countries when it comes to using equipment with low or zero emissions.”

Iwan Trompert, Operations Manager at BAM Infra B.V. (Netherlands)

Insights into the Technologies of the Future

Specialists from the Wirtgen Group and internationally recognized experts provided first-hand insights into the technologies of the future. In the program of presentations on the subject of sustainability, they shared their experiences and knowledge on subjects including the path to a sustainable construction industry, the potentials for CO₂ reduction offered by cold recycling and the recycling of hot-mixed asphalt, the handling of low-temperature asphalt, and the infrastructure required for the reliable operation of electrically powered crushing and screening plants.

Speaker
Digitalization

The eight technical presentations by international experts drew large audiences. For example, Michael Klein, Product Manager for Digital Products, spoke about how users can benefit from the Operations Center in their everyday work on the construction site.

About the Operations Center

On the subject of digitalization, they highlighted the various potentials of technological change. The main topic here was the John Deere Operations Center for construction equipment, the digital platform for the optimization of processes, machines, and services, and how users can benefit from it in their everyday work.

The breadth and depth of the presentations underscored that the Wirtgen Group has a road map that lays out how it can support its customers with reliable digital products and system and service solutions, in this way advancing the digital transformation of the industry.

Portrait

“We’re milling contractors, so we know all about things like Mill Assist. The tool helps to make the work easier for our drivers, and it enables us to deliver better milling results, reduce pick wear, and save fuel, all at the same time. So, at the end of the day, it cuts our overall costs as well. When we tell people about it, we say it’s ‘New Milling’, because it’s absolutely in a class of its·own when it comes to quality.”

Henk Vreeswijk (Managing Director) and Gert-Jan Prins (Division Manager) at Freesmij (Netherlands)

How to Do More with Less

The Wirtgen Group presented solutions for its customers’ Production Systems in a series of live demonstrations, and showed how the target-oriented utilization of technologies can lead to predictable results, greater precision, higher quality of the results, and the consumption of fewer resources.

Tolles Produkt

In-Place Cold Recycling

In-Place Cold Recycling

The first of the live demonstrations focused on the exceptionally sustainable in-place cold recycling process.

The train consisted of a Wirtgen cold milling machine W 150 Fi and a cold recycler W 240 CRi, a Vögele SUPER 2100-5i asphalt paver, and two HD+ 140i VV tandem rollers and a HP 280i-20 pneumatic-tire roller from Hamm.

“Here at the TechDays, I get the chance to see a whole load of new applications and solutions that make really good sense for a business like ours. Like cold recycling – it’s cheaper, it’s more efficient, and it helps us to improve mobility in our country much faster." says Krishna Naidoo, Project Manager at SANRAL (South Africa).

Kleemann Crushers

Versatile Kleemann Crushers

A further live demonstration clearly illustrated the enormous versatility of Kleemann crushers: Here, asphalt and concrete were crushed by two impact crushers – a MR 130 PRO and the brand-new MR 100 NEO.

Compact machines

Compact Machines in Action

Compact machines from the Wirtgen Group are primarily used on smaller road rehabilitation projects. After the Wirtgen W 50 Ri milling machine had milled off the pavement, the new mix was laid down by the Mini 502e and Mini 500e electrically powered pavers from Vögele. The HD 10e VV and HD 12e VO electric rollers from Hamm took over from there and compacted the new surface layer.

Production Systems Live at Work

The greatest ecological and economic potentials lie in the totality of the construction process. That the machines and systems achieve high-quality results through connected processes in the form of a so-called Production System was shown by the various live demonstrations – for instance in the use of low-temperature asphalt, concrete and asphalt recycling, or soil stabilization. They also illustrated how the target-oriented utilization of technologies can lead to predictable results, greater precision, higher quality of results, and the consumption of fewer resources.

As Knickel explains: “This enables our customers to realize more construction projects with fewer resources, build and rehabilitate more infrastructure, and simultaneously increase their profitability.” At the same time, he emphasized that digital assistance systems and process automation also contribute to offsetting the shortage of qualified personnel throughout the industry: “This will in turn enable less-experienced operators to achieve results in the same quality as a skilled specialist would do.” On top of this, telematics solutions will deliver greater transparency about the operational status of customers’ fleets and enable them to carry out proactive, and therefore even more precisely targeted, servicing and maintenance of their machines.

Portrait

“This enables our customers to realize more construction projects with fewer resources, build and rehabilitate more infrastructure, and simultaneously increase their profitability.”

Dr. Volker Knickel, CEO of the Wirtgen Group

A Look Behind the Scenes

On a guided tour through the Kleemann production facilities, the host of the event gave the professional audience fascinating insights into the manufacturing process chain. Since the construction of the new plant in 2009, the highly specialized facility has been successively extended and, like all other factories of the company group, has been constantly upgraded for sustainable operation in line with the Wirtgen Group’s sustainability strategy. Today, the Kleemann plant is one of the world’s most modern facilities for the production of large crushing and screening machines. Many of the visitors were particularly impressed by the highly complex prefabrication centers in which the core components of the Kleemann machines are produced with exceptional precision.

“Our concentration on target-oriented expansion of our product portfolio in the past years now enables us to offer ideal solutions for all applications, no matter whether for recycling or the processing of natural stone. To achieve this, we have invested in areas such as the expansion of our production capacities and the improvement of our assembly and logistics processes,” says Kleemann CEO Alexander Knam, describing the development of the company’s headquarters in Göppingen. He sees the specialist for materials processing equipment ideally positioned for the future: “With these investments, we have laid the foundation for the ongoing production of our products and technologies under ideal conditions, namely sustainably and efficiently,” says Knam.

“The plant is simply amazing, especially all the high-tech systems and machine tools. I was also amazed by how highly qualified the people who work here are and all the safety training they get.”

Anthony Farhat, Operations Manager at Gravel Ivoire (Porteo Group BTP), Côte d'Ivoire

Tolles Produkt