Browsing by Subject "Agricultural machinery industry"

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Beitrag zur Untersuchung des Innovationsgeschehens und ausgewählter Unternehmen der deutschen Landmaschinenindustrie von den Anfängen bis in die 1970er Jahre
(2017) Krombholz, Klaus; Köller, Karlheinz
Industrial production of agricultural equipment had already begun in the 18th century in England. First of all, the USA and from the middle of the 19th century onwards also Germany increasingly followed this development. Though this sector had primarily been characterized by crafts enterprises and small establishments for a long time, already in the 19th century the first large companies had arisen. During the following time, however, the small and mediumsize enterprises still dominated. Only as from the middle of the 20th century a gradual trend to large companies was to be found that began to prevail more and more also in Germany from the end of the 20th century. Within the agricultural engineering of the GDR this development had already taken place some decades earlier. After a relatively continuous development during the first decades essential changes in the corporate landscape occurred after a time of economic boom in the 1920s. This process was fortified by inflation and the depression. The majority of the large concerns established in the time of startups were affected thereby. The overcapacity generated again from a boom in the 1950s resulted in serious structural changes and in reducing the potential. Though the agricultural engineering of West Germany experienced a short special boom by the reunification at the beginning of the 1990s, the decrease in turnover as from the middle of the 1980s decisively influenced the corporate landscape during the 1990s. In this period foreign companies became active on the market to a great extent and advanced the globalisation of the sector. The agricultural industry in East Germany had diminished to a negligible dimension already in the middle of the 1990s. The German agriculture at first supplied themselves with agricultural engineering by imports primarily from England and the USA. However, already in the first decades of the 20th century the German industry of agricultural machinery could overcome the dependence on imports to a large extent and in the following they could achieve first places within the export rates in the international comparison by increasing own export rates. Beside the first own developments of the products, initially, the reproduction and replication of English and American prototypes dominated. In the second half of the 20th century, German developments were, above all, derived from American products in decreasing tendency. Finally, as from the 1990s, when the highest requirements were given to the agricultural machinery of the East German agricultural large enterprises on the local market, the German agricultural engineering grew to a leading driver of innovation. Though the German agricultural technicians also innovatively dealt with the whole range of the mechanisation solutions for the agricultural sector already very early, the product groups ripened at different times and were accepted and applied by the farming practice. Under this aspect, the innovation process was divided up into the former and later innovation areas. In the initial period the whole current agricultural technical product line was prevalently offered in the German agricultural machinery industry, whereas the assortment was subdivided in own developments, follow-up developments and reproductions as well as trading goods. At first, the enterprises only little focused on specialising in a limited assortment. This development increasingly began only as from the 1920s. From this point of view also the larger concerns only very rarely could aim at high-volume production. Especially the German production of tractors that was distributed among a large number of enterprises up to the 1960s had been burdened by comparatively low quantities and therefore by predominantly small-lot and medium-sized serial production for a long time. By contrast, the agricultural machinery of the GDR with its relatively small assortment was, in most of its product programmes, oriented towards high-sized serial production with extremely high export shares already from the 1960s onwards.