Productivity -- Think small

“If you’re a company that’s never run automatics” says Dave Hilbig, sales manager and trainer at Topcon’s dealership in Tustin, CA, “but you’ve got this job that requires very high tolerances, and you figure the way to do it is to run our Millimeter GPS on your grader; that’s way too much of a quantum leap. We’ve seen it happen. The operator in this case was so stressed he wasn’t willing to work through the little tweaking here and there needed to make the system work—to take a step back so that he could take three steps forward. Automatic laser systems on graders have been around for 20 years. If an operator’s running that, it’s a very easy transition to go into GPS. If he’s never run that system—putting him on GPS, he’ll be lost.”

Which means you have to be clear about who you’re training. “I can show someone how to navigate through the control box and what the system will and won’t do,” says Hilbig, “but I can’t operate a grader and cut beautiful grade. You still have to understand how to run the equipment and how to manage the material you’re pushing around. And anybody can sabotage anything. The operator or operators you’re depending on have to be ready to learn and they have to want to work to get proficient in the technology.”