December 13, 2021
This content relates to : DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. My name is Michael Gorman, Vice President of New Product Development and Product Management at Stanley Black & Decker. I wanted to take a few moments today to speak to you about technology and the specific investments in technology that we’re introducing in our professional power tools. Technology in the products, technology in the benefits and features that the products deliver. It’s an important part of our product route and certainly we believe an important part of the expectations that our end users are looking towards when they consider the DeWalt brand.
Let me first talk about what it means today in terms of products and specifically within our cordless products. The biggest areas of, of forward-thinking development and opportunities for us to continue to deliver real-world application solutions in the form of cordless products will come with technology investments and digital enhancements in motors and electronics, as well as battery cells. Identifying opportunities where we can deliver power in cordless solutions, in compact and portable cordless solutions to the industry is critical. So that means heavy investment in motors and electronics and partnering with our supply base and understanding from their, their innovations and their technology, what applies for the type of applications that are demanded by power tools. Battery cells specifically, and the development of, of new materials and new configurations and styles of batteries that not only will deliver on the power needs of the end-user, but will deliver on those needs in a compact and portable way that doesn’t compromise the end user’s ability to move around the job site. Those are just examples of where we’re investing digitally and with technology in actual power tools for cordless solutions that our users are demanding. When we think about other elements to support the power tools, really for batteries you need charging stations. So what users are looking for are faster speed solutions. So charging stations that can deliver 60 minutes or under in the recharge time for a battery pack, charging stations that can charge multiple batteries at once, like gang chargers or box chargers. We want to be able to offer the broadest range of charging solutions on the market today as we find specifically within the professional industrial segment the demand for these job sites to go cordless.
Another really important element of our digital investment happens with asset tracking. And the best way to think about asset tracking is to really think about being able to view where all your products are within the job site ecosystem. So, if you’re a construction manager or a tool crib manager on a 50 foot high-rise, you could sit within the trailer or the tool crib and really through an application on your smartphone, be able to identify and locate where all of the power tools that you have linked into that app are located. It’s important because it certainly helps with theft prevention on the job site. The intelligence that we’re able to introduce through our digital tracking can actually give us the health matrix of the tools themselves so we recognize or realize if troubleshooting is immediately or perhaps going to be needed and that allows us to budget and forecast. Or I should say, allows our end users to budget and forecast when a tool may be down and if they need a replacement. And, and really to have such a comprehensive loss prevention solution in place, not only loss prevention preventing the tool from leaving the job site, but, but downtime, because downtime is one of the most detrimental things to a professional user.
So we really look to focus on that when it comes to the investments that we make within digital and specifically in the area of asset tracking. As we consider how we want to continue to apply technology specifically across our cordless platforms, we’re going to continue to invest in motors, electronic switches, and battery packs that allow us to create ergonomic solutions that are smart in terms of being able to communicate with our user, that are going to continue to expand the application solution of what the products are capable of doing, utilizing the different battery platforms that we can employ and certainly focus on bringing cordless to high power solutions. So opportunities through which digitally, electronically, we can obsolete old forms of power where applicable like electric and pneumatic and gas. That is really ultimately what we are trying to accomplish with our digital and technology disruptive innovation.
Michael Gorman
Vice-President of New Product Development & Product Management
Stanley Black & Decker