PROGRESSIVE Killarney company Liebherr Container Cranes, one of Ireland’s leading engineering firms with a global presence, is playing an active part in Engineers’ Week 2019 which encourages primary and post-primary students, their teachers and their parents to explore the exciting world of engineering as well as highlighting the diverse career opportunities engineering offers.
Running all this week, engineers representing the company will visit classrooms and host students from schools in the Kerry and Cork region at the company’s facility in Fossa.
In addition to touring the huge plant, the students will get to see an advanced container-handling crane as it is being prepared to undergo extensive research and development into autonomous driving, remote control and alternative energy sources to supply power to the machine.
Engineers’ Week represents a fantastic opportunity for students to meet and chat with the engineers responsible for developing this technology, which will be deployed in ports and terminals around the world.
As they tour the factory, they will see highly skilled staff using state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques to build and assemble cranes and witness a wide variety of engineering disciplines and trades at work to make a world-class product.
The container handling industry requires reliable, robust, long lasting, yet exceptionally precise equipment. The crane being researched and developed on site will be capable of moving a 40-tonne container many millions of times, yet placing it automatically each time onto the back of a truck or train with millimetre accuracy and without human intervention. Remote control driving is being developed in parallel, allowing an operator in a remote room, locally or even in a different country, to control the cranes.
“In a rapidly changing world, it is critical that we utilise the most advanced structural, mechanical, electrical and automation techniques to design and build equipment,” said Charlie McCarthy, Managing Director of Technology/Engineering at Liebherr Container Cranes.
“We cannot afford to be complacent in our business as we continue to strive to be a dominant force and standard setter globally. We are now ready to embrace the fourth industrial revolution and researching ways to use data to connect our machines and increase machine intelligence,” he added.
The future will necessitate Liebherr’s products to perform like robots, making autonomous decisions for the machine itself and also for a larger ecosystem within which it performs.
“At Liebherr Container Cranes, we have a number of systems in place to attract the best talent, including our apprenticeships, scholarship programme and graduate programmes,” said Mr McCarthy.
“We employ a wide variety of engineers and tradespeople who have the opportunity to work on the development and build of equipment serving the ports and inland rail terminals of the future.
“Our global presence also provides fantastic opportunities for employees who have an interest in international travel to work in various locations worldwide.” he said.
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