Deere & Company (John Deere)
Canvas Category OEM : Agriculture
John Deere customers are at the center of everything we do. We rely on more than 180-years of experience and terabytes of precision data to know them and their businesses better than anyone else. Our easy-to-use technology helps deliver results they see in the field, on the job site, and on the balance sheet. We ensure seamless access to parts, services, and performance upgrades from take home to trade-in by providing world-class support throughout the lifecycle of their equipment, with productivity and sustainability always in mind.
Assembly Line
Heavy Machinery Meets AI
The process starts with developing what we call fusion strategies, which join what manufacturers do best—creating physical products—with what digital businesses do best: using AI to mine enormous, interconnected data sets for critical insights. Industrial firms will have to figure out how to connect hardware and software, steel and silicon, and humans and machines. In this article we’ll describe four kinds of fusion strategies and how to execute them. They all require reimagining analog products and services as digitally enabled offerings and learning to create new value from the data generated by combined physical and digital assets. Just as crucially, industrial firms will need to partner with other companies to create ecosystems with an unwavering focus on solving customers’ problems.
Deere is one of the companies leading the way in the industrial sector. Until recently, incumbent manufacturers of construction and mining equipment and other heavy machinery didn’t use the most advanced software in their products. That’s no longer true. Today, using generative AI and machine learning, they extract insights and trends from structured and unstructured data—including text, high-resolution 3D images, voice interactions, video, and sound—and create complex designs in seconds.
Another option is to offer performance contracts to guarantee that fusion products will be proactively maintained and updated, ensuring minimal downtime. Rolls-Royce is one company that does this. It guarantees uptime of close to 100% for its commercial airline customers by using AI to monitor and maintain the engines in planes. When something fails on one of its engines, Rolls-Royce knows about it in advance or finds out in real time, which allows it to troubleshoot the problem much more quickly.
John Deere, Meet Elon Musk: SpaceX Satellites to Link Farm Giant’s Equipment
Deere said it would tap SpaceX’s satellite fleet to propel the tractor maker’s digital farming push and help automate planting and harvesting in remote locations. The world’s largest farm machinery manufacturer signed a deal with SpaceX’s Starlink business to connect tractors, seed planters, crop sprayers and other equipment in areas that lack adequate internet service, allowing them to use Deere’s digital products.
John Deere and Yara partner to increase fertilization efficiency
John Deere and Yara have joined forces to launch a partnership that will combine Yara’s agronomic expertise with John Deere’s precision technology and advanced machinery. The partnership will enable farmers to increase yields and optimize fertilizer use, helping them contribute to the ambition of the European Union’s Farm to Fork Strategy.
John Deere Acquires Smart Apply
Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) has acquired Smart Apply, Inc., a precision spraying equipment company based in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The company developed the Smart Apply Intelligent Spray Control System™, an upgrade kit that can improve the precision and performance of virtually any air-blast sprayer used in orchard, vineyard, and tree nursery spraying applications. Smart Apply helps growers reduce chemical use, airborne drift, and run off, while optimizing high-value crop yields and meeting sustainability objectives.
John Deere has worked with Smart Apply since 2020.
Smart Apply’s precision spraying helps achieve up to 93% less chemical runoff and up to 87% reduction in airborne drift, while reducing chemical use an average of 50%. With less chemical use, growers also average a 50% reduction in water use.
đźšś Inside John Deere Harvester Works: Think your iPhone is cutting-edge? Try driving an X9 combine.
”Supply chain was massively disrupted last year,” said Jim Leach, the factory manager in East Moline. “We had hundreds of machines that were partially complete. We still haven’t seen a return to normal yet.” One way to minimize the wait for parts is to make them yourself. The Harvester Works has eight industrial Trumpf fiber-optic laser stations turning sheet metal into combine parts, chassis components and grain tank sides, then molding them on 10 press brakes — large industrial presses — in a process that is almost totally automated. The only need for human hands is to transfer the components from the lasers to the presses. The plant turns 60,000 tons of sheet steel a year into combine parts.
As big a challenge as making the parts is then keeping track of where they go, spread across Harvest Works’ 71 acres of floor space. Two years ago, employees were manually conducting daily inventory of which parts and aborning combines were where. Now, a large, white refrigerator-sized autonomous mobile robot purrs its way through the facility, scanning the RFID chips in various components to map the inventory down to each bin of bolts.
Assembling and checking are often done simultaneously. Michael Churchill uses an impact wrench gun containing an RFID chip that talks to Deere’s central production computer system, which knows when Churchill has tightened any given bolt enough and tells him to stop.
Comau’s MATE-XT wearable exoskeleton supports ergonomic well-being at John Deere’s parts distribution center in Brazil
Comau has equipped John Deere with multiple MATE-XT wearable exoskeletons to help sustain worker well-being, alleviate physical stress and reduce the ergonomic risk within its parts logistics operations. MATE-XT accurately replicates all movements of the shoulder, helping employees perform their jobs comfortably by reducing muscle fatigue without limiting mobility or adding bulk. Its ergonomic design can be easily adjusted to fit different people with different body types – changing the length of the shoulder straps and the required level of assistance based on the worker or the job at hand is quickly achieved in a few simple steps. Working closely with John Deere to implement the exoskeleton within its daily operations, Comau provided a hands-on training course held at John Deere’s 75,000m2 parts distribution center in Campinas, in the state of São Paulo.
Even when working with small and lightweight objects, the apparently minimal effort of repeated manual movements can take a toll on the body. To help John Deere quantify the benefits of using MATE-XT, Comau performed an electromyographic analysis of the ergonomic risk factor. MATE-XT kept the muscle at a rest stage for 98.5% of the activity time (compared to only 2.4% of the time without MATE-XT).
John Deere Turns To 3D Printing More Efficient Engine Parts
The new thermal diverter valve on the latest versions of John Deere 6R and 6M tractors isn’t just an innovative application of increasingly accessible metal 3D printing technology, it’s the culmination of about two years of R&D. It started with a challenge to ensure John Deere tractors would perform in cold environments. Engineers were tasked with developing a valve that could maintain fuel temperatures without affecting engine performance.
Currently, more than 4,000 valves are being shipped from GKN to the John Deere tractor factory for final assembly at a price per part that is less than forging or milling. Tractors with this 3D-printed part are already in the field, literally. MĂĽller says another benefit of 3D printing this particular part instead of using traditional methods, is added agility in the manufacturing process. Because 3D printing does not require molds or tools, part prototypes were faster and cheaper to create, which accelerated the design process. The design can be tweaked and improved at any time. Plus, when it comes to replacement parts, no standing inventory is necessary. The digital file of this value can be sent to any third-party manufacturer with HP Metal Jet technology and produced relatively locally and quickly.
Solving the Last Mile of Autonomous Farming
SparkAI is the first to generalize a solution we originally developed to help self-driving cars overcome unexpected driving scenarios, and make it available to the wider universe of automation applications. We combine people and technology in a lightweight API that resolves machine learning exceptions in real-time.
Here’s how it works: in moments of low-confidence, the autonomous tractor automatically calls SparkAI’s service, passing imagery and other metadata via REST API. SparkAI’s objective is to resolve difficult-to-discern details about the scene to support a real-time decision. We do this by combining two key components in real-time: (1) cognitive input from multiple human mission specialists trained for the use case, and (2) results from our own proprietary software-based decision systems. SparkAI returns this resolution directly to the robot. The robot then combines this resolution with its pre-existing knowledge of the world to decide on a safe and confident action.
Schneider, Deere Investing $76M in Reshoring Projects
Executives with Schneider Electric and Deere & Co. will invest tens of millions of dollars to expand factories in Kentucky, Nebraska and Louisiana—with Deere’s move shifting some production work to the United States from China. Schneider will put to work a total of $46 million at plants making circuit breakers and other electrical output products in Lexington, Kentucky, and Lincoln, Nebraska. The investments will include new equipment and machinery that will be more automated and technologically connected than the plants, which are 65 years and 50 years old, respectively, are today. Deere’s Louisiana plans call for the maker of agricultural and construction equipment to invest nearly $30 million to grow its operation in Thibodaux, west of New Orleans. That facility today designs sugar harvesting and earthmoving equipment and makes a range of products but will grow in the next two years to also produce medium-chassis cotton harvesters now being built in China.
Kreisel Electric to expand battery production capacities to over 2 GWh
Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) announced its next steps in meeting the growing demand for batteries as a sole- or hybrid-propulsion system. In addition to the production facility in Austria, John Deere is making an immediate investment in two additional locations to increase the production capacity expansion of Kreisel Electric (“Kreisel”) — the battery technology pioneer in which John Deere recently acquired majority ownership. The significant capital commitment will bring an increase of over 2 GWh to Kreisel battery production capacity, beginning with the opening of a new facility at the John Deere Saran factory — the primary manufacturing location for John Deere engines in the European Union. In parallel with this project, John Deere will also invest in battery assembly in the United States to support the growth of its customers and John Deere products. John Deere is committed to delivering solutions to its customers that revolutionize their work while unlocking value that is sustainable. By investing in battery assembly, John Deere shows this commitment.
Deere Invests Billions in Self-Driving Tractors, Smart Crop Sprayers
The company this year is rolling out self-driving tractors that can plow fields by themselves, and sprayers that distinguish weeds from crops. Deere, which helped make satellite-guided tractors ubiquitous in the U.S. Farm Belt over the past 20 years, is investing billions of dollars to develop smarter machines that the company said will make farming faster and more efficient than it ever could be with just farmers behind the wheel.
John Deere’s self-driving tractor lets farmers leave the cab — and the field
The technology to support autonomous farming has been developing rapidly in recent years, but John Deere claims this is a significant step forward. With this technology, farmers will not only be able to take their hands off the wheel of their tractor or leave the cab — they’ll be able to leave the field altogether, letting the equipment do the work without them while monitoring things remotely using their smartphone.
The big difference with this new technology is that drivers will now be able to set-and-forget some aspects of their self-driving tractors. The company’s autonomy kit includes six pairs of stereo cameras that capture a 360-degree view around the tractor. This input is then analyzed by machine vision algorithms, which spot unexpected obstacles.
John Deere foresees private 5G at its factories worldwide
The $546,000 John Deere spent to acquire 5 CBRS spectrum licenses last year has started the manufacturer on a path it says may eventually lead to private 5G networks in all its factories.
5G will be replacing Wi-Fi in the manufacturing facilities, and Ronning said the number of access points needed to cover the factory floors will drop. “It’s an order of magnitude less radios than what we’re accustomed to,” he said, adding that the 5G radios extend coverage to the area outside the factory as well.
Eventually, other devices and machines on the factory floor will also become more autonomous, Ronning said. “We view this as a key initiative to help us adopt machine learning and AI,” he explained. “As we move forward with further adoptions of those types of technologies we are going to be heavily leveraging the 5G work that we’re doing today.”
John Deere and Audi Apply Intel’s AI Technology
Identifying defects in welds is a common quality control process in manufacturing. To make these inspections more accurate, John Deere is applying computer vision, coupled with Intel’s AI technology, to automatically spot common defects in the automated welding process used in its manufacturing facilities.
At Audi, automated welding applications range from spot welding to riveting. The widespread automation in Audi factories is part of the company’s goal of creating Industrie 4.0-level smart factories. A key aspect of this goal involves Audi’s recognition that creating customized hardware and software to handle individual use cases is not preferrable. Instead, the company focuses on developing scalable and flexible platforms that allow them to more broadly apply advanced digital capabilities such as data analytics, machine learning, and edge computing.
Tractor Maker John Deere Using AI on Assembly Lines to Discover and Fix Hidden Defective Welds
John Deere performs gas metal arc welding at 52 factories where its machines are built around the world, and it has proven difficult to find defects in automated welds using manual inspections, according to the company.
That’s where the successful pilot program between Intel and John Deere has been making a difference, using AI and computer vision from Intel to “see” welding issues and get things back on track to keep John Deere’s pilot assembly line humming along.
Deere to advance machine learning capabilities in acquisition of Blue River Technology
Deere & Company (NYSE DE) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Blue River Technology, which is based in Sunnyvale, California and is a leader in applying machine learning to agriculture. As an innovation leader, Blue River Technology has successfully applied machine learning to agricultural spraying equipment and Deere is confident that similar technology can be used in the future on a wider range of products, May said. Blue River has designed and integrated computer vision and machine learning technology that will enable growers to reduce the use of herbicides by spraying only where weeds are present, optimizing the use of inputs in farming – a key objective of precision agriculture.