
Is it time to disrupt the heavy equipment design and manufacturing industry? - stsmith816
I&#x27;ve spent 3 years in the heavy equipment construction industry as a design engineer and I cannot believe how dated, bloated, and slow this entire industry feels all the way from welding parts of a crane frame together on the shop floor, to design engineering, to selling the machines, and finally even operating them.<p>There seems to only be a handful of major players in the industry as well. These companies are no doubt highly entrenched and stuck in their ways because there is little incentive to push the envelope. Each new machine my company would put out was, at best, an incremental improvement over what had been available before.<p>I&#x27;d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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ux4
I don't know much about the heavy equipment industry, but from the outside
looking in, it doesn't appear to have the conditions to support "disruption."
First of all, the majority of consumers in the heavy equipment industry are
price insensitive. Heavy equipment is mostly sold to other businesses,
agriculture, construction and engineering firms, military, and government.
Those companies will buy the equipment regardless of price or any other
improvement.

Secondly, there isn't really any scalability in the market for heavy
equipment. Even if firms made a big change to the heavy equipment design/mfg
industry, they most likely won't capture any new markets. Even a substantial
change won't make the average Joe say "Hey I should buy a 400 ton dump truck."
The only benefactors of the disruption would be the consumers listed above,
who again are pretty indifferent.

Finally, it's also heavily burdened by bureaucracy and regulations. I imagine
the biggest bottlenecks to the industry are all the requirements for safety
and quality. If someone gets hurt with your equipment, you are in for a multi-
million dollar lawsuit. You need approvals, permits, inspections, and QA, each
of them slowing the process down further. It's also possible the industry can
experience a drastic change from a breakthrough in technology, some kind of
mass adoption of a new process, or some sudden increase in demand for heavy
equipment, but I see that being dependent on changes outside of the industry.

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JoachimSchipper
Why do you expect rapid change? Mature industries tend to grind out a few
percentage points of efficiency per year; the kind of growth you see in new
markets - the internet, mobile - is not the norm, and does not drive most
economic growth.

(I know next-to-nothing about your particular industry.)

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cimmanom
What major improvements or efficiencies do you you think could be achieved in
that industry using newer technology?

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dyeje
Probably, but it's going to require a LOT of capital.

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stsmith816
It definitely would but probably not as much as an automotive startup.

