ICT Group reduces time-to-market of innovations at Spierings Mobile Cranes

The first emission-free mobile tower crane

The largest, strongest and first emission-free mobile tower crane, these are all achievements of Spierings Mobile Cranes. The Oss-based company is constantly looking for innovations to improve their cranes and remain at the forefront of the market. For that reason, they switched to model-based code generation. In close collaboration with ICT Group and their Motar platform, Spierings Mobile Cranes has brought a unique product to the market.

The 'Spieringskraan' is a household name on Dutch construction sites. Spierings Mobile Cranes designs, manufactures and sells mobile tower cranes. This type of cranes is sought because of their speed and the ability to place them close to buildings. They are not only widely used in the construction industry, but also for a variety of other lifting tasks, such as in petrochemicals for plant maintenance.

Innovation and sustainability

Spierings has always been strongly committed to innovation and sustainability. They demonstrate this by some important features of their product line, according to Gerbert van de Ven, Manager Research & Development: "We are not only building the largest mobile tower crane, but also the strongest. And with the City Boy, we had the first emission-free hybrid mobile crane that can drive electrically. Recently, we also stopped building and selling diesel-powered cranes; We only produce hybrid models. This puts us at the forefront of the market. We have been able to speed up this process thanks to our close collaboration with ICT Group and their Motar platform." This innovative approach is also reflected in practical functions such as the adjustable consumption of power by the crane operator.

Develop efficiently with model-based code generation

According to Van de Ven, in order to maintain that product leadership, Spierings must be able to develop efficiently with a small team and make rapid progress. "I already had experience with model-based design and code generation. We then started researching how we could apply this method to the development of software for the electronic control units of our cranes." After a first attempt, Spierings came to the conclusion that they needed an automated process for the whole thing. "We found that solution in ICT Group's Motar."

Motar is a product of ICT Group's ICT Electronics division. It allows users to model software without any need for development skills. Motar automatically generates the corresponding code for ECUs from the functional model, which increases code quality for production environments, reducing time-to-market. "Thanks to Motar, we can now develop a functional model for the entire crane in Simulink and compile it directly to C-code, fully automated," says Van de Ven. "As a result, we now have a better overview, we can develop a lot faster and improve the quality of our product."

Another advantage of using Motar is that Spierings can now benefit from the large pool of people who can work with Simulink. "Although not all of our employees had experience with code generation, most of them were well-versed in MATLAB and Simulink. That makes the step to generating code relatively easy. Of course, some adjustment were needed, but we used a phased approach, in which we were also supported well and quickly by ICT Group," Van de Ven recalls.

Van de Ven also appreciates that ICT Group is closely involving customers in Motar's roadmap: "They have informed us about which new controllers will be supported and what innovations will be introduced in the software. This is useful for us because we can then take it into account in our own planning. And the team is also open to our suggestions. When we indicate which functionalities are important to us, they take this into account and develop them in the next version."

Initially, the ICT Group team did not expect Spierings to build such large models in Motar. "We pushed the boundaries of their solution, but the team behind Motar always thought along with us about our challenges and quickly solved the limitations we encountered," Van de Ven looks back.

Spierings has now completely switched to model-based code generation with Motar in one domain for its software. For the City Boy, the software for the electric motor to drive the crane also comes from the tool. Van de Ven does not rule out the possibility that Motar's code generation can also be used for other software developments within Spierings. "Because we were able to switch from our old code to Motar in a relatively short time, we are also exploring in which areas the software can add further value," he says. "The Motar platform allows us to innovate faster, so we would like to continue our successful partnership with ICT Group for many years to come.”