In Asia, South America, and Africa, where growing populations are leading to rapid urbanization, Kubota’s mini excavators are receiving wide acclaim. In North America, meanwhile, which boasts the world’s largest construction market and continues to see investment in housebuilding, infrastructure development, and road construction, in addition to mini excavators, Kubota offers the compact track loader (CTL) and the skid steer loader (SSL). Through this diverse lineup of compact construction machinery, Kubota has supported and contributed to society’s development.

Kubota released the CTL to the North American market in 2010, and the SSL in 2015. Compared to the CTL, which uses crawlers for increased ground contact, the SSL runs on wheels. The CTL boasts outstanding operability on soft ground and has excellent stability and digging power. The SSL is highly mobile, meanwhile, and due to its ability to make small turns it is ideally suited to work in tight spaces. Both are used for a diverse range of work, such as the carrying and loading of materials, earth, and sand, city roadworks, and gardening, and are highly popular models in the North American market.

However, with other leading manufacturers dominating the compact construction machinery market, Kubota foresaw a tough environment. The company thus sought to provide products more suited to the North American market using its local needs-based approach to manufacturing, and so began thorough market research using information from the frontlines, such as how the products were to be used and what sort of challenges lay ahead. In reflecting this information back to product development teams and model change projects, Kubota was able to further enhance quality and earn the trust of its customers. Elsewhere, partial production of the SSL, which had just begun to establish a presence in the North American market, was moved to Kubota Industrial Equipment Corporation (KIE) in Georgia. By shifting production to where the product was to be used, lead times could be shortened and costs could be reduced, helping to both increase customer satisfaction and enhance the product’s competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, Kubota has recently moved some production of its CTL to Great Plains Manufacturing, Inc. (GPM) in Kansas, and mass production began in 2022. Moving forward, the company will continue to utilize local information in product development, and through its locally oriented approach to manufacturing, will steadily but energetically take over the compact construction machinery market in North America, which is home to the world’s most powerful economy.