Autonomous Forest Machines : Enable Technology Shift with New Business Models

Sammanfattning: Autonomous machines and vehicles are on the rise today, seen in different industries such as mining, agriculture, and road transportation. However, this technological shift has not yet had any significant breakthrough in the forestry industry, where manned harvesters and forwarders are used. Since the challenges with technological shifts and radical innovations often are business model-related rather than technical, this study takes a business-oriented approach. The previous research has been mainly focused on the critical technical aspects of autonomous forest machines. Therefore, this study will focus on the business model aspects for their commercialization. This study was conducted as a single case study focusing on the business conditions for commercializing autonomous forest machines in the Swedish forestry industry. The study also discusses four potential networked business models for autonomous forest machines. The primary data source was semi-structured interviews with 12 representatives from forest machine manufacturers, forest companies, forestry service contractor firms, and researchers. The study shows that the role of a traditional forestry service contractor will diminish relative to autonomous forest machines. Moreover, incumbent manufacturers will probably face a business model dilemma related to commercializing autonomous forest machines. On the contrary, forest companies will benefit the most from autonomous forest machines. Therefore, the study suggests that this type of actor should take a leading role in facilitating technology and business development. The study also shows that this potential technology shift will enable new actors, such as IT or software companies, to take an essential role by operating fleets of autonomous forest machines in the future.