Intelligent Impact Sensing and Redesigned User Interface Enhance Forklift Productivity Solution

Crown Equipment Corporation, one of the world’s leading forklift manufacturers, today released Crown InfoLink® 2.5, the newest version of its fleet management system that transforms forklift operating data into meaningful information. InfoLink 2.5 allows managers to save time and improve fleet performance by introducing new features that significantly reduce false impact alarms, deliver real-time performance indicators based on user-defined goals, and display critical measurements in graphic form for at-a-glance decision making.

“There is a wealth of information being generated at the truck level and Crown InfoLink 2.5 enables our customers to organize, prioritize and manage that data to improve the productivity and efficiency of their fleet – and their entire operation via an enhanced dashboard interface,” said Maria Schwieterman, product manager for the Crown Insite™ Productivity Suite, which includes InfoLink. “Crown InfoLink 2.5 takes a significant step forward by enabling our customers to establish benchmarks around key areas and manage their performance against those benchmarks.”

The new interactive InfoLink interface helps busy managers quickly identify and prioritize issues around compliance, impacts and equipment. Color-coded opportunity indicators provide an easy-to-monitor view of whether conditions in each area are meeting established goals (green), require attention (yellow), or need immediate action (red). Dashboard views deliver a graphical overview of performance based on the user-defined operating range for each opportunity. Drill-down reports present a more detailed analysis of areas such as service efficiency, equipment use and operator performance. 

Crown InfoLink 2.5 also marks the introduction of Crown Impulse Technology, an intelligent impact sensing system that combines data from the impact sensor and the truck to provide more accurate and meaningful impact alarms. Current approaches to impact sensing treat every event that triggers the sensor equally, which creates nuisance alarms that can mask or misrepresent actual conditions. With Crown Impulse Technology, only those impacts that meet user-defined criteria, based on truck operating data, trigger alarms.

“Working with our customers, we’ve discovered that as many as 70 percent of impact alarms are considered nuisance alarms,” said Schwieterman. “That frustrates managers and reduces their ability to use impact sensing to improve safety and reduce costs. Crown Impulse Technology makes sure they only receive alarms for events they define as impacts, while the InfoLink interface provides an easy-to-monitor visual cue for when impacts require management attention.”

Crown InfoLink is a vehicle management system that restricts unauthorized access to equipment, ensures safety checklist compliance, and detects and records impacts while delivering a wealth of fleet operating data through the management interface. InfoLink is part of the Crown Insite™ Productivity Suite. The Insite Productivity Suite is a family of information management solutions that, in addition to InfoLink, includes Crown FleetStats®, which tracks and analyzes fleet service data; Crown Access 1 2 3®, which collects truck operating data and supports InfoLink; and Crown SureSpec, a forklift specification tool.

About Crown Equipment Corporation

Crown is one of the world’s largest lift truck manufacturers. Crown’s award-winning line of lift trucks maintains a reputation for exceptional product design, engineering and manufacturing. From the smallest hand pallet truck to the highest lifting turret truck, Crown seeks to provide users with safe, efficient and ergonomic lift trucks that lower total cost of ownership and maximize uptime. Headquartered in New Bremen, Ohio, Crown manufactures lift trucks that are sold throughout the world.