Sany was a major sponsor of The Crane Industry Council of Australia (CICA) National Conference and Exhibition in Adelaide. A number of the senior management team from Sany’s factory visited the event with Tom Liu, General Manager of International Sales for Sany mobile cranes, presenting a paper to the delegation. Cranes and Lifting was able to discuss Sany’s commitment to the Australian market with Tom and his team.
“I’m in charge of the crane business for the overseas market, and I am here at the CICA conference to support our local team including Country Manager Neo Liu and our National Distributor Tutt Bryant Equipment,” Tom said.
“Sany is very focused on the Australian market. For many years, the Australian market has recognised Sany for the quality and performance of our heavy lift crawler cranes. But I think our near future focus on the market, will be on our all terrain and telescopic crawler ranges as we now believe the quality of these products is capable of penetrating the high-end of the local market. The quality of the design, engineering, manufacture and also the intelligence built into the cranes has reached a level that we believe will meet the requirements and expectations of local customers,” said Tom.
“As I mentioned, I am also here to support Sany’s National Distributor Tutt Bryant Equipment, but I am also interested in surveying Australian customers, to better understand what is going on within the Australian market, what customers are saying about, and requesting from Sany. I will take this information back to the factory, so our engineers can make modifications, to improve the quality, and also the adaptability of our products so they better suit the Australian market and conditions. These are the main purposes for my visit,” he said.
Tom goes on to explain how responsive the Sany factory is to the customer feedback through distributors like Tutt Bryant Equipment. He explains how the factory processes and works on developments on this basis.
“We have a department within our organisation which is responsible for gathering all the customer feedback. The department includes the service engineers, members of the sales team, members of the Research and Development team and also the Quality Control team.
“In our factory, this department coordinates the customer feedback every day and they then organise a weekly meeting with the frontline teams where the feedback is discussed. This can be positive feedback including what is working well for our customers as well as negative feedback, where problems are commonly occurring. We have the ability to change our approach to the design and manufacture of the cranes and continually include innovations designed to improve the performance or our products,” said Tom.
He goes on to discuss the markets’ perception that the intelligence that goes into Chinese-manufactured cranes is not as innovative as European or North America manufactured product, despite the Chinese cranes being well designed, engineered and manufactured.
“Actually, Sany is very strong on the intelligent control systems, and we have been working on significant developments on these control systems. In China, we have applied a lot of technology to the cranes, particularly our all terrain and telescopic crawlers ranges. All of the technology has been tested on the Chinese market and it has proved to be stable and reliable, and we are now ready to demonstrate this technology to the overseas market like Australia.
“We have continually developed our technological knowledge. As you know China is very advanced with 5G technology and we have been integrating this into our cranes. In the near future, the Australian market will experience this technology and our Australian customers will feel much more comfortable with this innovation,” said Tom.
Chen Wei Ng, Managing Director of Tutt Bryant Group, had this to say about the innovation from Sany.
“In terms of innovation, you just have to look at the 80t capacity all electric telescopic crawler crane as an example of innovation from Sany. The all-terrain is, as we all know here in Australia, a challenging segment to work in. Just with road regulations, the weight of the crane, number of axles, length, width, so it’s a very unique place to push the all terrain product.
“For Sany and any other manufacturer, it’s difficult for them to bring into Australia a stock-standard unit that’s accepted by the rest of the world. Sany and Tutt Bryant have to be in consultation regarding the developments around the all terrain market and for this reason we are mainly focused on two models which are the 60t capacity all terrain that we have on display at the CICA event and the 120t capacity all terrain. We’re focusing on these two because we don’t want to spread our wings too wide, we want to get these products right for our Australian customers, and for Australian conditions,” said Chen Wei.
“The innovation is there, and the other point I’ll make is, back in China Sany boasts a thousand-strong engineering team. In terms of innovation and in terms of technology, they don’t see themselves as competing against other Chinese manufacturers. Sany is a global player and they are challenging other global competitors. It’s a very outward-looking organisation.
“Sany is committed to the Australian market. Tom has been on the road for the last month meeting customers and talking to industry people here in Australia. We have three full-time service engineers here from Sany. We have one R&D manager who has just arrived in Australia, so they’re on the ground, they’re constantly providing feed back to the factory. They’re writing reports every time they attend to a machine, confirming what they observe, what the customer is saying and feeding this back to the factory,” he said.
Lawrence Liu is Sany’s Regional Director of International Sales.
“I’m in charge of the region. As Tom has said, we have paid a lot of attention to the Australian market and invested a significant amount of resource here. Over the years we have placed a significant focus on this market. Members of our team have been based here conducting research.
“We communicate with local customers and our dealers to understand what types of products the market requires, and what customers want. We take all this information back to the factories, and then we refine the products, make the required improvements and bring the newly improved products back to the market,” he said.
“Sany spends a lot of time with the operators to understand what they require from a crane. We coordinate the operator feedback relay this to the factory and they build the suggestions into the models they are working on. We then bring these new products back to the market and our customers will see their suggestions have been included in the new designs.
“Sany is not like other manufacturers, especially other Chinese manufacturers, which bring in and try to sell Chinese products. Sany is different, we listen to the market, we are constantly making modifications and improvements which the market wants,” said Lawrence.
Tutt Bryant Heavy Lift & Shift operates a number of large capacity Sanys in its fleet. Chen Wei explains how they have been performing.
“We have owned Sanys for the last 10 years. We started with eight cranes with capacities ranging between 300t and 400t and they are still performing strongly. They have been well supported by Sany, even though they are 10 years old.
“In terms of service and in terms of parts, Sany is still supporting these cranes, which is fantastic and testament to their commitment to after-sales service. More recently we’ve gone even bigger with 800t capacity crawlers and those cranes have performed beautifully. We’ve had nothing but positive feedback. One of the winning Lift of the Year entrants features our Sany 800t crawler.
“More recently, we have pushed into Sany telescopic crawlers. For construction in the cities and urban environments, these cranes come into their own. We’re finding increasing customer acceptance and adoption of telecrawlers, even when it comes to applications which were the domain of rough terrains. I think many applications are now quicker, easier and more flexible with telescopic crawlers,” said Chen Wei.
Tutt Bryant Equipment was recently appointed the National Distributor for Sany products. Tom explains his aims, expectations and objectives with this relationship.
“Actually, our goal is not to just simply sell product, we want to provide the best quality product and service to our customers. The Tat Hong Holdings brand, which is the parent company of Tutt Bryant, is very strong and an ideal fit for our cranes. I hope Tat Hong Holdings will continue to cooperate with Sany, because this will enable us to provide a good quality service adding more value to the relationship,” he said.
Chen Wei adds this to the conversation.
“I think you can say the relationship is multifaceted. We’re not just a distributor of Sany products, we’re a user as well. The Tutt Bryant Heavy Lift & Shift division provides a lot of valuable feedback regarding product improvement, and we can point towards the development of the 250t capacity tele crawler as being driven by Tutt Bryant Heavy Lift & Shift and we are pleased to announce the first unit has just landed in Australia,” he said.