Skip to main content

Caterpillar sets out the four key issues for its customers and spotlights seatbelt safety first

April 7, 2025 Read time: 2 mins
Caterpillar senior executives Tony Fassino (right) and Herwig Peschl during the Caterpillar press forum at bauma

The four key concerns of our customers are: “Safety, optimising processes, labour shortages, and productivity, “ says Caterpillar.

According to the company’s senior VP Herwig Peschl, Cat is integrating a range of products, technologies, and services to address these concerns.

The construction and mining giant says that it wants to help its customers get the most out of their fleets and products.

Group president Tony Fassino said the most-impactful technologies will focus on integrating safety tools across the whole jobsite … from the machine operator on site, all the way back into the operations team in the office.  

“Probably the most simple example of that is seatbelts,” says Fassino. “Unfortunately, there is a very long history of incidents in the industry from operators not having their seatbelts on.  

“If we can integrate (this problem) into the system, (it will allow) operations managers to see how many times operators don’t have their seatbelts on, to see who keeps forgetting to put their seatbelt on, and (to find out) why do they do that.”

Fassino wants to get to a position in which managers can assess: “What the pattern has been over the last week, how many incidents have we had in the last month, and how can we ensure everybody has their seatbelts on.”

Louis-Florent Sion, VP procurement & supply chain Europe at lime and mineral solutions producer Lhoist, said that cost and safety were the company’s two biggest challenges with its heavy mobile equipment.  

“I hope technology will make cost optimisation easier for each individual quarry manager to get the best out of their machines.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Sophisticated machine telematics packages offered
    September 27, 2013
    Several of the major equipment manufacturers now offer sophisticated telematics packages fitted as standard to their machines. Caterpillar and Komatsu were amongst the leaders in this field, allowing a high level of access to a machine's systems and sub-systems for performance monitoring, maintenance management and geofencing purposes for example. To the customer this offers the chance to address fleet running costs and utilisation, reduce the risk of theft and increase overall efficiency. Customers can eve
  • Rehlko president Eric Fontaine interview: Ambitious plans for new brand & new leadership values for former Kohler engines group
    April 10, 2025

    Eric Fontaine joined Rehlko as president of engines in January 2025, not long after the business was rebranded from Kohler.  

    “I was impressed with the spirit of innovation and the products we have, together with the high quality of the engines,” says Fontaine of Rehlko.  

    “For our products, within the package we provide, we really are best in class, especially around torque and power density.” He also pays tribute to the talent and enthusiasm of the Rehlko engine team.

  • The future of autonomy
    January 13, 2023
    The panel of experts from Trimble and Dynapac discussed where the construction industry is on the path to autonomy at present, where it is heading, and Trimble’s overall corporate vision for the future. Trimble’s philosophy is that machine autonomy is about more than just controlling the machine. To move the industry forward, autonomy solutions must also turn real-time data into real-time information to optimise and coordinate the jobsite of the future according to Trimble. Providing full access to that data presents a challenge, but can be achieved.