I would call them mobile sensor suites that have computational capability, not only on-board, but to your point, off-board as well.
Is that how you see a tractor or a combine or construction equipment - that these are gigantic computers that have big mechanical functions as well? Then you can zoom all the way out: we had Jim Farley, who’s the CEO of Ford, on Decoder a couple of weeks ago, and he and I talked about how Ford’s cars are effectively rolling computers now. One of the things The Verge wrestles with almost every day is the question of, “What is a computer?” We wrestle with it in very small and obvious ways - we argue about whether the iPad or an Xbox is a computer. It’s to make sure that we’re developing technologies that can scale across the complete organization, across those combines you referenced, and the tractors and the sprayers, and the construction products, and deploy that technology as quickly as possible. We call it the intelligent solutions group, and its job is really to do exactly that.
We’ve got a centrally-organized technology stack organization. Do you also oversee the portfolio of technologies that make combines more efficient and tractor wheels move faster? There’s hardware, software, services that I think of as sort of traditional computer company problems. One of the reasons I am very excited to have you on Decoder is there are a lot of computer solutions in your products. I get to look out five, 10, 15, 20 years into the future and try to make sure that we’re putting into place the pieces that we need in order to have the technology solutions that are going to be important for our customers in the future. chief technology officer, my role is really to try to set the strategic direction from a technology perspective for the company, across both our agricultural products as well as our construction, forestry, and road-building products. Give me the short version of what the chief technology officer at John Deere does. You make a lot of equipment for farmers, for construction sites, that sort of thing. John Deere is famously a tractor company.
#USED JOHN DEERE SERVICE ADVISOR TOOLS SOFTWARE#
Half of the states in the country are now considering right to repair laws that would require manufacturers to disable software locks and provide parts to repair shops, and a lot of it is being driven - in a bipartisan way - by the needs of farmers. In fact, right now the prices of older, pre-computerized tractors are skyrocketing because they’re easier to repair. But it’s a huge deal in the context of farming equipment, which is still extremely mechanical, often located far away from service providers and not so easy to move, and which farmers have been repairing themselves for decades. Right now, tech companies like Samsung and Apple and John Deere all get to determine who can repair their products and what official parts are available.Īnd because these things are all computers, these manufacturers can also control the software to lock out parts from other suppliers. John Deere is one of the companies at the center of a nationwide reckoning over the right to repair. How should they get upgraded? How can they be kept secure? And most importantly, who gets to fix them when they break? Like all that farming data: who owns it? Where is it processed? How do you get it off the tractors without reliable broadband networks? What format is it in? If you want to use your John Deere tractor with another farming analysis vendor, how easy is that? Is it easy enough?Īnd then there are the tractors themselves - unlike phones, or laptops, or even cars, tractors get used for decades. If you get it right, precision agriculture means farmers can be way more efficient - they can get better crop yields with less work and lower costs.īut as Decoder listeners know by now, turning everything into computers means everything has computer problems now. The idea, Jahmy says, is to have each plant on a massive commercial farm tended with individual care - a process which requires collecting and analyzing a massive amount of data. But the entire business of farming is moving toward something called precision agriculture, which means farmers are closely tracking where seeds are planted, how well they’re growing, what those plants need, and how much they yield. Jahmy told me that John Deere employs more software engineers than mechanical engineers now, which completely surprised me. And I think our conversation will surprise you. My guest this week is Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, the world’s biggest manufacturer of farming machinery.
One of our themes on Decoder is that basically everything is a computer now, and farming equipment like tractors and combines are no different.
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