在一种移动式或履带式起重机从概念上讲被大规模市场化之前，前期的研发和试验工作是很必须的，从而能确保给消费者提供达到最新发展水平的技术。
这种新型的起重机在公司的产品发展规划中必须正确的定位，并且所需的基本的性能数据，对技术的选择和当然产品将要提供的所需满足的消费者的利益必须小心的协调起来，从而能满足市场的需求。
我们公司全局战略的一个最主要的要素是为此而制定的长期产品发展规划，在这里，我将要讨论四个方面的内容，它们是：
l 自发进行革新以及研发的速度
l 起重机的概念和技术
l 产品计划和性能参数
l 经济性和消费者利益
1 自发进行革新以及研发的速度
在1990和2000年之间利勃海尔一共研发或者改型已有产品一共达到29种起重机类型。如今我们的销售领域包括13种全路面式起重机和5种履带式起重机，但是这些仅仅代表了我们在过去十年中所经历的研发工作量的一半。这个名单不得不把一些特殊的工程考虑在内，例如沙特阿拉伯半岛阳光强烈的地区，日本的Kurushima大桥所用的绞盘，阿拉伯联合酋长国的搬运器。
Before a mobile or crawler-track crane can be marketed successfully a large amount of conceptual, preliminary development and experimental work is needed to ensure that the customer can be offered state-of-the-art technology.
The new crane has to be correctly positioned within the company’s prod-uct programme and the required basic performance data, the choice of technologies and of course the customer benefits that it is intended to provide must be carefully coordinated so that the expectations of the mar-ket are satisfied.
A major element in our company’s overall strategy is therefore long-term product development planning, four aspects of which I would like to dis-cuss here. They are:
__Willingness to innovate and speed of development
__Crane concepts and technology
__The product programme and performance data
__Economy and customer benefits
1. Willingness to innovate and speed of development
Between 1990 and 2000 Liebherr either developed or extensively revised 29 crane models. Today our sales programme consists of 13 all-terrain cranes and 5 crawler-track cranes, but these only represent about half of the development work we undertook in the past ten years. The list also has to take into account special
