Testing the waters

Manufacturers gauge industry reaction to new equipment

By Jeremy Harrell
Daily Reporter Staff

Construction equipment is not much different than any other kind of product.

Before a new piece hits the market for sale, it undergoes a battery of testing and refinement. Since the construction industry will be the ultimate user of the product, many times it’s contractors who perform the tests and provide guidance for the manufacturers.

Manufacturers seek out contractors for advice on the front end of the design process, so the equipment engineers can gauge what the industry wants and model the piece accordingly, said Lance Henrickson, product safety engineer with Gehl Inc., an equipment manufacturer based in West Bend. Once the equipment is built -- and meets safety-certification requirements -- the piece goes out into the field, where it’s subjected to performance and endurance tests, he said.

"We give (the equipment) to a series of customers and interview them after they’ve run the equipment for a while," Henrickson said. "They’re out their giving it their best shot, and we ask them what they thought. We can’t guess what they like. We pretty much have to depend on what we call customer-acceptance testing."

In some cases, the responses come down to suggestions for fine-tuning equipment, he said. Recently, Gehl sent out a new skid-steer loader, and after fielding comments from contractors, engineers reworked the main control lever and adjusted its angle by 10 degrees to conform to operators’ requests, Henrickson said.

"We’re always tweaking it during the development process to make it right," he said.

Manufacturers can also be uncertain how contractors will welcome a new piece of equipment, said Bill Dentinger, vice president of Bill Dentinger Inc., a masonry contractor in Waukesha. Having contractors give the product a whack offers the equipment engineers a taste of how the piece will function outside the laboratory, he said.

"It’s no different than test driving a car," Dentinger said. "The people who are designing these things have shirts and ties and are sitting in a clean office, and they want to see how it works in the mud."

Free ride?

The prospect of testing a new product can be appetizing for contractors since it means getting a piece of equipment for free, Henrickson said. Both sides benefit: The manufacturer gets results on the equipment’s durability and endurance, and contractors get to try out new things, he said.

"Contractors say, ‘Thanks. Free machine," Henrickson said.

But contractors also get involved in testing equipment for reasons other than getting free stuff, said Ralph Winkler, secretary-treasurer of Lincoln Contractors Supply Inc., Milwaukee, an equipment dealer that sends new products out into the field for testing. It’s more about taking part in the cutting edge of product development, he said.

"(Contractors) don’t look at it from the standpoint of getting something for free," Winkler said. "They know we’re trying to help them get better equipment. The contractors who are well established, they’re well aware that technologies are changing all the time."

In fact, the economics of product testing are of little consequence when factoring the benefits of trying a new product, Dentinger said. The masonry trade is thousands of years old, so his company profits by getting the first look at any innovation that could increase productivity, he said.

"If there’s a new secret, we want to know about it," Dentinger said. "If there’s a better way to do things, we’d like to find it."

Market-testing equipment also can extend beyond the debut of a new product, said Frank Molterer, president of MBW Inc., a Slinger-based manufacturer that specializes in soil compactors and cement finishers. Manufacturers often send out equipment already on the market with hopes that contractors will deliver feedback on how to make an old product better.

"(Contractors) are told that they’re part of an ongoing process of fine-tuning," he said. "People generally think that a product hits the market and it’s fully formed. It’s eight years, 10 years down the road when it’s fully formed."

Confidential reports

Sending a piece of truly "new" equipment out into the field comes with its own perils, Molterer said. Construction manufacturers find themselves in a hotly competitive market, and guarding trade secrets often prevents equipment makers from sending prototypes onto job sites where they fall under the scrutiny of anyone with ambitions on a new patent, he said.

"If it’s a top-secret, patentable kind of thing, you’d be a damn fool to release it to the market," Molterer said. "We’re all very, very cautious if there are matters of intellectual protection involved. Even if it’s not, (manufacturers) aren’t just going to let it out into the work place where someone can steal the idea."

In one case, MBW delivered a new piece of concrete-finishing equipment to a work site for testing, and just two days later, a competitor called MBW threatening a patent-infringement suit, Molterer said, noting that the suit never developed.

"We thought we had everything under control, and that’s what we’re worried about," he said.

For that reason, a lot of product testing goes on behind the scenes and away from job sites, Henrickson said. Manufacturers have their own testers who provide the concrete suggestions that lead to the products contractors eventually try out in the field, he said.

"When we’re checking it out, we’re frankly a lot more particular," Henrickson said. "Our (in-house) testers are told to be the fussiest customers the world’s ever known. They abuse the machine a lot and complain a lot."

Testing a new machine properly in the field comes down to finding the right subjects, Molterer said. The manufacturer has to find contractors who do a lot of the kind of work the piece is geared for, and they have to supply good advice, he said.

"You will rarely find contractors, dealers or salesmen that would be engineers," Molterer said. "The trick is to separate the wheat from the chaff. A lot of good information comes out of those exercises. But there’s also a lot of chaff."

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