Agriculture 4.0
Digitalisation finds its way into all areas of life, even into the agricultural engineering sector. Theodor Leeb talks about digitalisation at HORSCH.
terraHORSCH: What does digitalisation at HORSCH mean?
Theodor Leeb: For us in the management it is important to follow a clear, long-term digitalisation strategy, but also to break down the big term digitalisation to beneficial topics. You have to proceed pragmatically, realistically and related to practice to advance quickly.
Our whole digitalisation strategy is roughly divided into two sectors: internal and external. Internal means that we want to digitalise all processes and workflows within the company to the greatest possible extent. This applies to the sectors R & D, production, sales, service and so on. Besides appropriate IT systems, the key is a Single-Source strategy. I.e. there may only be one single source of any data. This guarantees that the information is always up to date for all users. The objective of the external strategy is to facilitate processes between manufacturer, dealer and customer, but also to improve the workflow of arable farms. We want to support this three-way relationship of customer, dealer and manufacturer with digital tools in the best possible way.
terraHORSCH: Why does HORSCH do this?
Theodor Leeb: Topics like documentation, traceability etc are extremely important and challenging – especially in case of a high variety of products and a fast, flexible product development. I also see this with the legislator side and the burden of proof in mind. In the Netherlands the machine has to record for example the spraying pressure to be able to prove that the drift stipulations have been complied with in case of a control. Because of environmental regulations, e.g. the fertiliser use, such measures will increase – all over the world.
But it is not only just that. We also want to facilitate and link workflows so that farmers can save time and money. If we continue to think about autonomy, processes and workflows to a large extent have to be planned in advance to allow for automation in the first place. Among others we work with high priority on the interface topic. The transfer of track planning data or application maps has to work, too. And there will be other ideas and options we perhaps are not yet aware of. And we always ask ourselves: Does it make the process easier or even more complex? What does the customer need?
terraHORSCH: What does this look like in practice?
Theodor Leeb: We see high potential among others in the service or the spare part procurement sector. With a digital twin, a 1:1 image of the machine, we want to facilitate this significantly. Imagine a customer getting into the HORSCH Portal via smartphone or tablet by means of a QR code and immediately seeing the digital version of his machine. When referencing to the machine position he can move the smartphone along the machine and the 3D model moves along virtually. You can virtually look into the transparent machine. You simply click on the part you need and among others you will see information about delivery time, price and you can send the order by pressing a button. Thus, the process will be easier for the final customer but also for the dealer who automatically gets the order and can forward it to us. This is not yet possible, but the first machines for which we can provide a digital twin as a parts catalogue in the Portal are already working in the field.
Moreover, HorschConnect connects the machine to the internet and in case of a problem our service can read out error codes and machine parameters. In the future, we want to deploy updates for the machines “over the air”, i.e. there doesn’t have to be a service technician on site.
Digitalisation for the final customer also includes telemetry and the operation of the machine functions via Smartphone by means of the HORSCH Telematics Portal and MobileControl. Thus, it will be possible to access the data of one’s own machine from anywhere in the world to read out and analyse various farm parameters – all in real time. With our terminal larger farms can manage their machinery even better. Moreover, the farm manager can have messages of his machine sent directly to the smartphone, e. g. error messages or the position of the machine.
Control machine functions quickly and comfortably via the smartphone. 
HORSCH Telematics Portal – example of a Maestro CV