The team members who were given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity all work on Komatsu’s AHS (Autonomous Haulage System) project, which involves developing new systems that enable the unmanned operation of Komatsu’s ultra-class dump trucks at mine sites around the world. With this background experience, they were interested to hear Pat’s views on how technology has evolved during his career and where he feels it is heading in the future.
“Well, if you take aerodynamics as an example, 30 years ago we just used a wind tunnel to collect and analyse data,” explained Pat. “Then 20 years ago we brought in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Now in recent years we have utilised neural networks to interpret CFD cases, allowing us to quickly see how things change between multiple results. And then if we look forward to the next few years, we expect to be in a position where we can ask the system questions such as ‘I want to move these flow structures around to be able to gain an advantage’ and it will come back and tell you what shape the aerodynamic pieces need to be to increase that performance. Technology is always evolving, and both with us at Williams and you at Komatsu, you have to work hard to stay at the cutting edge.”
Having spent almost 40 years at the pinnacle of motorsport across various teams and roles, Pat has seen firsthand how important this commitment to development and innovation is to building success, whatever the industry. “The reason why I love Formula 1 is that you have to keep learning,” he said. “If we develop a car and it wins a world championship, we can’t just stop there, we have to keep moving forward to make sure other teams don’t move past us. And that goes for all technology. You’ve got to keep pushing the boundaries of innovation every single day.”
This mindset aligns closely to Komatsu’s Kaizen approach to business. The very heart of Kaizen is achieving success through frequent small improvements to processes, systems and routines. It’s making little changes, bit by bit, that become very big changes over time. For example, if an operation improves a tiny 1% each day, it will be 38 times better by the end of an entire year.
The other key differentiators behind Komatsu’s business stature and philosophy were at the heart of a question that Pat then posed to the team members. “As a young engineer, I’ve learned that Komatsu’s strengths are safety and reliability,” responded Kazuma Kodama (AHS Supervisory System Development Group, Field Automation Development Center, Development division). “We have the Komatsu Way philosophy, and if you follow that philosophy when you develop something, that becomes a difference compared to other companies. I think that’s the key point. The difference comes from the culture and the people. That culture helps create the advantage.”
