Theodor Leeb talks about Horsch's digitization

For us, management is important to follow a long -term digitization strategy, but also to divide the great topic of digitization into beneficial topics. To advance quickly, we must proceed pragmatically, realistically and taking into account the practice.

Our entire digitization strategy is divided into two sectors: internal and external. Internally, we want to digitize all the processes and work flows within the company at most possible. This applies to the sectors of research and development, production, sales, services and so on. In addition to appropriate IT systems, the solution is a strategy with a unique source (to be existed A single source of data). This guarantees that information is always updated to all users. The goal of the external strategy is to facilitate the processes between the producer, dealer and customer, but also to improve the workflow of farms. We want to support this trilateral relationship between customer, dealer and producer with digital tools in the best possible way.

Why does Horsch do it?

Topics such as documentation, traceability, etc. They are extremely important and provocative, especially in the case of a great variety of products and their rapid development. When I say it, I also consider legislation, the conformity that we must obey. For example, in the Netherlands, the machine must record the spray pressure in order to demonstrate that the legal provisions have been respected in case of control. These measures will be taken all over the world, taking into account environmental regulations, for example, in the use of fertilizers.

But that's not just this. We also want to facilitate and monitor work flows so that farmers can save time and money. If we continue to think of autonomy, the processes and workflows must be planned, to a large extent, in order to allow the first automation. Among other things, we work with priority on the interface. The transfer of data or data planning map should also work. And there will be other ideas and options that we are probably not yet known. But do we always ask ourselves: does the process make the process easier or even more complex? Why does the customer need?

What do I do this in practice?

We see a high potential, among other things, in the service sector or in the purchases of spare parts. Creating an identical digital variant, a 1: 1 image of agricultural equipment, we want to facilitate this significantly. Imagine a customer who enters the Horsch portal via a smartphone or tablet, with a QR code and immediately sees the digital version of his car. It can walk on the smartphone along the car and the 3D model moves virtually. Basically, you can look inside. Just click on the piece you need and among others you will see information on delivery times, the price and you can send the order only by pressing a button. Therefore, the process will be easier for the end customer but also for the dealer who automatically receives the order and can send us to us. This is not yet possible, but you are already working on the first machines for which we can offer the digital option for the catalog of the portal parts. In other words, I'm already on the field.

In addition, Horschconnect is connected to agricultural machines and, through the internet, in the case of a problem, our service can read the error codes and car parameters. In the future, we want to implement «Over the Air» updates for cars, which means that there is no service technician on site.

Digitization for the end customer also includes telemetry and functioning of the functions of agricultural cars through the smartphone, through the electronic portal of Horsch and MobileControl.

Therefore, it will be possible to access the data of your car from anywhere in the world to see and analyze different parameters of the farm – all in real time. With our terminal, larger farms can manage their equipment even better. In addition, the farm manager can send messages on his agricultural machine directly on the smartphone, for example error or position messages.

Check the functions of the car quickly and comfortably via the smartphone.