Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE) has been rolling out its innovative digital service, Volvo Site Operations, in many key markets following its European launch earlier this year. The brand-agnostic solution enables quarrying and mining customers to monitor and positively adjust their production across all brands of machines and assets, unifying data and providing actionable, real-time insights that help customers to take better control of their businesses.
Jeroen Snoeck is excited about how Volvo Site Operations can help elevate the operations of Volvo CE quarrying and mining customers to new heights. Volvo CE’s Site Solutions Manager tells Aggregates Business that the solution was piloted at Swedish and German quarrying customer sites, along with other industry customer sites, from early 2024 before its official launch at bauma 2025 in Munich, Germany (7-13 April). Now firmly embedded at those quarry pilot customer sites, Volvo Site Operations is also being initially made available to quarrying and mining customers in European and Oceanian markets.
“Our current solution is Volvo Connected Map and Performance Indicator, which uses data from the Volvo Co-Pilot [Dig Assist, Haul Assist, and Load Assist], but we also wanted to get the data from the non-Volvo machines, and Volvo Co-Pilot was not built for that. Customers needed and wanted to get the entire picture,” explains Snoeck. “As well as seeing machines going from A to B, quarrying customers wanted to start managing their material flows and stockpiles. As well as Volvo CE and other brands’ loaders and haulers on a quarry site, Volvo Site Operations also integrates data from crushers and screeners, conveyors and silos. All those units can measure material volumes, and we wanted to bring all that tonnage information together to enable customers to leverage the data into actionable insights.”
With Volvo Site Operations, machine operators are provided with an intuitive tablet that collects geoposition, load ticket and other data. This information is then integrated with machine and productivity data gathered through a cloud-based solution, consolidating everything into a single, cohesive view. Site managers can monitor machine performance, track material flow, and assess CO₂ emissions and productivity across each process, enabling them to pinpoint areas for improvement.
Measuring critical parameters in the production flow, Volvo Site Operations offers valuable insights to streamline tasks and optimise material movement. This can result in claimed productivity increases of 10-20%. Production dashboards share key information on material movements and fuel consumption, removing the need for paper-based tracking and guesswork. The service alerts operators in real-time to potential faulty dumps, helping to avoid costly mistakes and rework. By automating data collection and reporting, administrative burdens can be reduced by up to 80%, according to Volvo CE, simplifying processes, saving time, and improving accuracy.
As Snoeck explains, through advanced geo-fencing and asset positioning, Volvo Site Operations enables the real-time mapped tracking of machines and assets across worksites, enhancing situational awareness and supporting operators in making safer decisions. Alerts notify operators of approaching vehicles, speeding and unauthorised entry zones. Instant communication of important site changes, like speed limits and restricted zones, helps prevent potential hazards. By improving visibility across the jobsite for operators, site management and visitors, the latter through a smartphone visitor app used by, among others, engineers arriving onsite to carry out machine maintenance and servicing, Volvo Site Operations elevates safety standards.
Volvo CE states that Volvo Site Operations enables potential fuel savings and CO₂ emission reductions of between 10% and 15%. The map, together with real-time positioning, helps optimise traffic conditions, reduce queues and waiting times to improve productivity while lowering fuel consumption. Accurate CO₂ emission measurements from all machines and assets provide insights for fleet optimisation. By leveraging data, actionable steps can be taken today to reduce emissions significantly.
“Most OEMs have signed up to the AEMP 2.0 standard, which allows us to get data from 120 different brands of machinery, but for the real-time production data, we work with third parties, like Loadrite and Tamtron, that provide weighing systems, and we integrate their APIs [Application Programming Interfaces] and clouds with our clouds,” says Snoeck.
“Volvo Site Operations is available in two levels: Site Operations Start and Site Operations Advanced. The first level enables machine operators to view the location of other machines on their work site, offering better site safety and coordination. To start accessing and using data from Volvo CE and other machines, you require the Advanced package, and that is charged per asset. We don’t charge visitors for using the visitor app.”
Snoeck says each installation of Volvo Site Operations at a quarrying or mining customer site is not a case of “flicking a switch and it works”, but more of a close collaboration with the customer and their Volvo CE dealer. “It takes around three to four months to get everyone to buy into it. We work with customers and let them tell us exactly what they are looking for. That’s how we ended up including silos and crushers in the system, given their criticality to material flow.”
Going into more detail on how Volvo Site Operations is integrated into a quarry customer’s work site, Snoeck says: “We start by having a meeting where we don’t say much but instead listen to the customer describe their operation. From that, we might identify a key issue or pain points. We come to the next meeting with a proposal saying, ‘What if we implemented it [Volvo Site Operations] like this? If the customer likes this, we will go into more detail with one of our engineers and one of theirs about how we’ll set it up. The customer may want to test the solution with just two or three machines to see how it works before expanding it across their fleet.”
Snoeck emphasises that Volvo Site Operations has been designed for easy usability. “You do have to specify material type if there is more than one material in a zone, so a loader operator can identify which they should be loading. If there is only one material type to load from a specific zone, the system will automatically work with that.”
Snoeck says Volvo Site Operations can also be used to inform a loader operator or haul truck driver about their daily tasks and areas of operation. “It may be that the site manager has asked an excavator operator to work on several material flows, and the operator can pick the flow he wants to start with. The system will recognise if the excavator operator is digging in the right flows, or if a truck is dumping in the right zone.”
Based on customer feedback, Snoeck says that Volvo Site Operations may be further enhanced at some stage by integrating each quarrying and mining customer’s planning systems, enabling them to better direct and monitor load and haul machine operators.
Asked about the growth potential for Volvo Site Operations over the next year, Snoeck says: “I think that the system suits sophisticated markets, such as Europe, Oceania and also North America. It is difficult to roadmap its take-up. It is down to customer demand.”
