ServicesTractorsData Connect opti­mises mixed machine fleets

Christoph Beyer, head of the plant produc­tion team at Agraset agri­cul­tural co-oper­a­tive, says the first fuel consump­tion eval­u­a­tions on trac­tors equipped with JDLink led to heated discus­sions between the drivers. In one case the John Deere dealer had to help opti­mise the tractor. But the addi­tional trans­parency created by JDLink has meant that Mr Beyer’s entire team of drivers can now handle the machines better and more effi­ciently than before.

In spring, he equipped a Claas forage harvester and five John Deere trac­tors pulling trailers with the new Data Connect system for the first time. Data Connect does not require any sepa­rate hard­ware and enables machine loca­tion tracking, the loca­tion history for up to two years after first use, fuel levels and the travel direc­tion in the John Deere Oper­a­tions Centre. Mr Beyer can now imme­di­ately recog­nise if there are bottle­necks or traffic jams in the chop­ping chain and inter­vene if neces­sary.

Plan­ning for entry into site-specific manage­ment

Christoph Beyer, head of the plant produc­tion team at Agraset agri­cul­tural co-oper­a­tive

Not all of his machines are equipped with a telemetry system yet, so Mr Beyer does not have a complete overview. He plans to close these gaps: In total, it will take around three to five years for all impor­tant machines to be equipped with Data Connect.

However, Mr Beyer’s plans do not end with an opti­miza­tion of the use of the machine fleet. The company manage­ment team is also thinking inten­sively about an entry into site-specific farm manage­ment. A start should be made with vari­able N fertil­iza­tion based on scanner data. Initially, this does not require the creation of appli­ca­tion maps, for which a large amount of soil and other data must be collected first.

However, a large amount of data is required for opti­mising the machinery fleet and for site-specific manage­ment, which can easily be brought together in one place in the Oper­a­tions Centre and used for various tasks. Mr Beyer is increas­ingly using the John Deere Oper­a­tions Centre as a cloud solu­tion in addi­tion to Excel tables and field maps. He’s been very happy with it, espe­cially since the last update, and can certainly imagine contin­uing to use it. His vision is that all machines in a mixed fleet under­stand each other.