Being slender is certainly healthier, but now for Dongfeng, it’s more profitable as well.

LuiGong’s CPCD25 forklift went through a redesign, slimmed down, and is now selling well in Argentina.

It seems when the forklift was first introduced there, it was shipped in a standard 20- foot container.  But due to its profile, only two of the machines would fit into one container. This became a disadvantage as dealers told Dongfeng that competitors could fit four machines into a 20-foot container, thus giving a huge savings on freight costs.

To respond to dealer concerns, Dongfeng assigned a cross functional team to correct the issue. The overseas forklift marketing group, forklift R&D, the forklift plants and the shipping company came together to resolve the bottleneck.  With many ideas for new designs, tests and modifications, the team came back with the solution for how to pack more trucks into one container without affecting quality or performance.

The solution was to reduce the width of the chassis and shorten the axles, making the profile of the entire machine slimmer. While this seems like a simple and elegant solution, it become more complex when one considers that the entire manufacturing process can be affected by such a change.

The forklift has passed the tests from international logistics, and successfully arrived at dealerships.  To the delight of the Argentina dealers, the new slimmer forklift model now ships four to a container and reduces freight cost by US$1200. So far, 28 of the new style models have been shipped to the country.