When we had adopted John Deere industrial engines for our smaller (<
200kW) generators, I got to spend several weeks at John Deere's
training facility in the Quad Cities. Amazing place, full of all of
their agricultural and construction equipment.
One thing I found interesting:
John Deere, like many manufacturers, uses icons for identifying
various functions on their equipment. For example, a throttle would
have a rabbit (fast) and a turtle (slow) on the bezel. My question
to them was, "What do you do if the country where the equipment is
gong doesn't have rabbits or turtles?"
The response was that they would research the local flora and fauna
in advance, and if necessary, make new icons that corresponded with
animals in that area that had similar characteristics.
The other thing that I saw there was an ongoing project using ground
scanning radar on the bottom of tractors along with GPS' to measure
"slip" during plowing. This allowed them to adjust the load on the
engine to achieve the proper amount of slip. Cool.
Dan
JD is a tech company. They also have a division that does nothing
but SAP for JD and other large companies who use SAP.
The main Competitor is Ag Leader, to whom Craig applied.
Ag electronics technology is a 50 year old field. The DickeyJohn
Acre monitor (UK) was the first broadly accepted technology. It was
well accepted by 40 years ago. When GPS was tied to acre monitors,
the latest revolution of crop productivity was born. Now those are
coupled with IR and other imaging technologies to manage each square
foot of farmland. (it used to be each square yard) It is a whole
different world.
Most of it is spinoff from NASA space program, directly or indirectly.
JD's electric foundry is about 35 years old now. At the time it was
the most high tech foundry in the world. It is still pretty up to
date with the updates they have done. It is an amazing place. I
have not been inside the "new" engine works. I am sure it is an
amazing place too.
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