Get FinancingTakeuchi Compact Excavators From 1971 To Today
Innovation is key in any industry, but when you’re the first company to build and sell a specific product, it’s a badge of honor you can carry with you for years to come. Takeuchi is the perfect example of this because it manufactured the world’s first compact excavator in 1971, and continues to develop new variations on that product today.
Early Days
Takeuchi’s first compact excavator came complete with 360-degree cab rotation and a boom swing mechanism in a small form factor built for operating in tight quarters. In fact, the genesis for the project came about in the 1970s where in order to dig out earth to lay foundations, site developers were forced to have employees go in with shovels and pickaxes. It was not only hard menial labor, but it also took multiple workers quite a bit longer to finish a job that could be much more easily completed by a piece of machinery.
The President and CEO of the company, Akio Takeuchi, decided that the best way to solve this problem was to build compact excavators that could fit into smaller areas but still give operators a full range of motion to work with when moving dirt. This innovation was part of Takeuchi’s “need responsive product development,” which is essentially the idea that the company innovates its products based on the needs of its customers rather than trying to guess at what their needs might be in the future.
Rapid Growth & Expansion
Takeuchi as a corporation balances itself atop three pillars: creation, challenge, and cooperation. The first and third pillars, creation and cooperation, revolve around building strong relationships with customers, encouraging innovation within the construction equipment space, and working together to reach goals. This is also what pushed the company to introduce its first compact rubber truck loader in 1986.
The second pillar, challenge, is about moving forward and expanding rather than perhaps taking easier paths. That’s why after the success of its first compact excavator and establishing an assembly plant in Japan, the company went on to establish a plant in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1979, another in Manchester, United Kingdom, in 1996, another in near Paris, France, in 2000, and yet another in China in 2005. Having these assembly plants spread all across the world makes it possible for Takeuchi to serve a global customer base.
On Solid Ground
Takeuchi still holds onto its roots tightly and never loses sight of how important it is to focus on the needs of the customer when developing new products. Today, Takeuchi primarily focuses on its TB series of compact excavators that are available in different configurations, including short tail swing, standard, and zero swing. And while most of these excavators are on tracks, there are some models with wheels as well. This versatility in design and function makes it so that Takeuchi compact excavators can operate in tight quarters, on rough terrain, and in almost any other operating environment you can imagine, which is exactly why the company built the first one nearly four decades ago.