Is it time to disrupt the heavy equipment design and manufacturing industry? | Hacker News Reader

Is it time to disrupt the heavy equipment design and manufacturing industry?

4 pointsstsmith8165 comments

I'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.

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.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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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.

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.)

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

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

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

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