By Rich Johnson
In 1927, when asked about the possibility of taking pictures, Harry Warner, the founder of Warner Brothers Studios said, “Who… wants to hear actors talk?” Clearly, he didn’t understand the future, because today Warner Brothers Studios produces nothing but talking pictures.
While Harry Warner was mulling over the relative value of movies with sound, a far more visionary man — self-taught mechanic/inventor, Clessie Lyle Cummins — had already been hard at work changing the world for eight years. Convinced that an engine technology developed by Rudolph Diesel in 1890 held great promise for the future, Cummins secured manufacturing rights from a Dutch licensor called Hvid and went to work.
Finding the existing technology to be underdeveloped, Cummins hired a former Hvid engineer named H.L. Knudsen to help pioneer a new design. Sold through the Sears catalog as “Thermoil” models, the new Cummins engines were bought by farmers who used them, shared them and then shipped them back at the end of the season under Sears’ money-back guarantee policy.
Then came the Great Depression. It crippled one of Cummins’ prime markets — marine engines. But great challenges reveal the man, and Clessie Cummins stepped up to the plate and swung hard. He installed a diesel engine in a Packard limousine and, on Christmas Day 1929, he took corporate-financier, William Glanton Irwin, for a ride in America’s first diesel-powered automobile. It was a move that saved the company. With fresh Irwin investment capital, Cummins set a goal to popularize the idea of diesel-powered cars. In a Duesenberg, he set a speed record at Daytona. Next, he drove a Cummins-powered truck from coast to coast on $11.22 worth of fuel. And later on, a Cummins team set an endurance record at Indianapolis Motor Speedway of 13,535 miles.
These publicity efforts didn’t go unnoticed, and it helped convince some truckers and fleet operators to switch to Cummins engines. Still, it wasn’t until 1937 that the company turned its first profit. By concentrating on building a reputation for high-quality engines, three years later Cummins was able to offer its first 100,000-mile warranty. In the intervening years, Cummins engines have been ubiquitous, as part of every war effort and major highway and other infrastructure construction projects across the nation and around the world.
Technology: A Corporate Culture
Thanks to the forward-looking vision of Clessie Lyle Cummins, and the long history of the company that emerged from his dream, a corporate tradition of technological innovation has been established. When I asked Dr. Steve Charlton, executive director of heavy-duty engineering, about the corporate atmosphere of technological advancement, he said, “Some of the big events in our history that have moved us ahead have been technology-driven. I think Clessie really pioneered high-pressure fuel injection systems in North America, and only recently I was looking at a patent that went all the way back to 1925. I sat with Clessie’s son Lyle, going through some of this, and I was just amazed that the architecture of the fuel system that we’ve used until quite recently owes its lineage all the way back to Clessie Cummins and some breakthroughs that he made. Clessie himself had something like forty patents that were pretty key, and we’ve just sort of followed in that tradition. But I think it’s important to understand that nobody here is developing technology just for technology’s sake. It’s all focused on the customer.”
As new engineers come into the company, the “old-timers” bring them up to speed in the corporate culture. “Even the youngest engineers who join us, we share something with them on how we view the needs of customers. We care about product cost, performance, fuel economy, sociability — which is more than emissions, it’s things like leaks and odor and noise — all of those things. So we have these key attributes that we care about for the customer, and we educate our young engineers early on that these are the things we’re developing a product for.”
Today’s Cummins diesel engines are light-years ahead of those first historic steps in diesel development, and Cummins is now positioned at the leading edge of diesel technology. Exciting new developments are underway. An example of this can be seen by the fact that Cummins, working in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy, announced in early May of this year that there has been significant progress toward meeting engine efficiency and emissions targets. This, as part of the government/industry 21st Century Truck Partnership with the truck and bus industry that was initiated in April 2001, with the key aim of achieving a tenfold reduction in engine emissions combined with a substantial increase in engine efficiency.
Commenting on Cummin’s contribution to the program, Edward J. Wall, head of DOE’s FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Office said, “Heavy-duty truck diesel represents the most energy-efficient power unit we have on the road today for moving goods or passengers. As part of this program between government and industry, Cummins has successfully demonstrated that the heavy-duty engine has the potential for even higher levels of efficiency while still meeting stringent emissions requirements. Looking ahead, this offers the opportunity for our trucks and buses to reduce fuel consumption and help reduce the nation’s dependence on imported oil.”
Cummins demonstrated an ISX heavy-duty truck engine with an increased Brake Thermal Efficiency (BTE) of 45 percent while reducing emissions to levels associated with the future introduction of 2007 technology. Particulate Matter emissions were reduced to 0.01 gram/hp-hr by utilizing a Cummins Particulate Filter, while oxides of nitrogen were lowered to 1.2 gram/hp-hr using in-cylinder combustion control. The work provides a foundation for the further development of engines capable of meeting EPA 2007/10 emissions. Current heavy-duty engines meeting the EPA 2002 regulation typically achieve a BTE level of 41 percent.
Brake Thermal Efficiency represents, in percentage terms, the amount of energy converted from diesel fuel into useful mechanical work by the engine. By increasing the BTE level, the engine becomes more efficient and offers the potential for increased fuel efficiency by a near equivalent percentage. Coincidentally, achieving higher fuel efficiency also results in reduced CO2 greenhouse gas emissions from the engine.
“We have achieved some impressive technology advances to meet the initial engine efficiency and emissions deliverables of the program,” said Christine Vujovich, Cummins vice president of marketing and environmental policy. “Now we are moving ahead to achieve an even higher 50 percent BTE target with NOx emissions at a lower level of 0.2 g/hp-hr. A key program driver for Cummins is to ensure that these technological advances are commercially viable and minimize the impact on OEM vehicle installation.”
So how does all this happen?
A “Among the technology at work here are things like cooled EGR, combustion improvements, and after-treatment,” explained Dr. Charlton. “A lot of the work we’ve done is to find ways to reduce NOx without loosing fuel economy. We’re studying new ways to deliver fuel and air to the engine. Much of this is still in the lab, but we’re working on quite radical ways of burning fuel. We’re also studying alternatives to the way we drive accessories like air conditioning, power steering and such, looking at ways of bringing them under electrical drive, so we don’t have parasitic losses to the engine horsepower.”
Are most of Cummins’ technology efforts driven primarily by the demand to meet new emission regulations, or is there something else at work here?
A “We take the challenge to meet the EPA emission requirements for granted. We have to do that, and it gets a lot of attention. But the truth of the matter is that there are lots of different ways to meet the standard. We spend a lot of time studying the different options so that we can choose solutions that are going to offer the best fuel economy for the lowest product cost and the highest reliability. We do something that we call ‘Voice of the Customer,’ in which we go out to the customer base and listen to them — asking them very open-ended questions to get a richer picture of what the customer wants. Then we come back and process that information, so we can develop what the customer wants. Taking all that into account, in addition to the emission controls, the thing is to develop engines that are going to delight our customers.”
Is all this new technology making things so complicated that it increases the chance for something to break down or fail?
A “We still hold to the principle that simple is better,” he said. “We try to minimize the number of parts, electronic connections, etc. I think we’re pretty successful at this. We try to minimize the number of sensors and other devices, and we leverage the flexibility of the systems to accomplish new and better things. If you look around the industry, there are some very complex engines out there. We have a pretty simple system, and we work very hard to improve reliability.”
So, where does that leave you? Obviously, things have come a long way since 1919. It isn’t just about farmers and Sears catalogs anymore. Today, Cummins Inc. is a global technology leader; a corporation of complementary business units that design, manufacture, distribute and service engines and related technologies, including fuel systems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions, and electrical power generation systems. With headquarters in Columbus, Indiana, Cummins serves customers in more than 160 countries through a network of 550 company-owned and independent distributor facilities and more than 5,000 dealer locations. There are more than 28,000 employees worldwide, and Cummins reported sales of $8.4 billion in 2004.