|
Disruptive Technological
Change in the Mechanical
Excavator Industry
Excavators and their steam shovel predecessors are huge pieces of capital equipment sold to excavation
contractors. While few observers consider this a fast-moving, technologically dynamic industry, it has
points in common with the disk drive industry: Over its history, leading firms have successfully
adopted a series of sustaining innovations, both incremental and radical, in components and
architecture, but almost the entire population of mechanical shovel manufacturers was wiped out by a
disruptive technology—hydraulics—that the leaders’ customers and their economic structure had
caused them initially to ignore. Although in disk drives such invasions of established markets occurred
within a few years of the initial emergence of each disruptive technology, the triumph of hydraulic
excavators took twenty years. Yet the disruptive invasion proved just as decisive and difficult to
counter in excavators as those in the disk drive industry.
1
LEADERSHIP IN SUSTAINING TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
From William Smith Otis’ invention of the steam shovel in 1837 through the early 1920s, mechanical
earthmoving equipment was steam-powered. A central boiler sent steam through pipes to small steam
engines at each point where power was required in the machine. Through a system of pulleys, drums,
and cables, these engines manipulated frontward-scooping buckets, as illustrated in Figure 3.1.
Originally, steam shovels were mounted on rails and used to excavate earth in railway and canal
construction. American excavator manufacturers were tightly clustered in northern Ohio and near
Milwaukee.
Figure 3.1 Cable-Actuated Mechanical Shovel Manufactured by Osgood General
61
Source: Osgood General photo in Herbert L. Nichols, Jr., Moving the Earth: The Workbook of
Excavation (Greenwich, CT: North Castle, 1955).
In the early 1920s, when there were more than thirty-two steam shovel manufacturers based in the
United States, the industry faced a major technological upheaval, as gasoline-powered engines were
substituted for steam power.
2
This transition to gasoline power falls into the category that Henderson
and Clark label radical technological transition. The fundamental technological concept in a key
component (the engine) changed from steam to internal combustion, and the basic architecture of the
product changed. Where steam shovels used steam pressure to power a set of steam engines to extend
and retract the cables that actuated their buckets, gasoline shovels used a single engine and a very
different system of gearing, clutches, drums, and brakes to wind and unwind the cable. Despite the
radical nature of the technological change, however, gasoline technology had a sustaining impact on
the mechanical excavator industry. Gasoline engines were powerful enough to enable contractors to
move earth faster, more reliably, and at lower cost than any but the very largest steam shovels.
The leading innovators in gasoline engine technology were the industry’s dominant firms, such as
Bucyrus, Thew, and Marion. Twenty-three of the twenty-five largest makers of steam shovels
successfully negotiated the transition to gasoline power.
3
As Figure 3.2 shows, there were a few entrant
firms among the gasoline technology leaders in the 1920s, but the established firms dominated this
transition.
Beginning in about 1928, the established manufacturers of gasoline-powered shovels initiated the next
major, but less radical, sustaining technological transition—to shovels powered by diesel engines and
electric motors. A further transition, made after World War II, introduced the arched boom design,
which allowed longer reach, bigger buckets, and better down-reaching flexibility. The established firms
continued to embrace and succeed with each of these innovations.
Figure 3.2 Manufacturers of Gasoline-Powered Cable Shovels, 1920-1934
62
Source: Data are from the Historical Construction Equipment Association and from The Thomas
Register, various years.
Excavation contractors themselves actually pioneered a number of other important sustaining
innovations, first modifying their own equipment in the field to make it perform better and then
manufacturing excavators incorporating those features to sell to the broader market.
4
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
