Envisioning More Uptime: How It Works? At its 36 locations in North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, James River Equipment (JRE) has worked hard to ensure its customers realize the maximum benefits of John Deere WorkSight™ — the exclusive suite of technology solutions that includes JDLink. The dealership’s seven technology specialists work with approximately 550 customers who use JDLink on nearly 3,800 machines. Four of JRE’s dealership locations have a dedicated John Deere WorkSight technology room featuring a large monitor. “We can sit down with a customer and walk them through JDLink,” says Billy Stonerock, JRE WorkSight Solutions Consultant, Raleigh. “It’s a great way to show them how it works and how it can benefit them.” JRE’s technology specialists handle hundreds of alerts per day, either contacting the customer directly or passing the information on to a service manager or field dispatcher. “If we see an alert related to low coolant, hydraulic fluid, and oil pressure, I’ll get on the phone with the customer to let them know what’s going on,” says Data Analyst Mike Posey. “They can notify the crew to see what the problem is, like a blown hydraulic line. Often, we’ll catch an issue before it becomes a larger problem or catastrophic failure.” The team can also detect a problem using remote diagnostics and programming. “If we need boots on the ground, we’ll send the information over to the service department, and they’ll dispatch a service truck with the right part in hand,” says Technology Specialist Leo Wambold. “In the past we’d wait for the customer to call and send a technician to perform a diagnosis on site. The technician would have to return to the shop, get the part, and then return to the machine for the repair. Remote diagnosis can save hours of machine downtime.”

More Local Support

Dealers are on the front line of monitoring customer machines for potential issues. Most of our construction machines come with five years of JDLink™ machine telematics service. This gives our dealers the capability to monitor your fleet around the clock through their individual Machine Monitoring Centers.

Response time is quick, so many problems can be addressed before they cause a major unplanned downtime event. Remote diagnostics and programming enable your dealer to read codes and record performance data without even having to make a trip to the jobsite. And if a jobsite visit is warranted, remote diagnostics can help the technician show up with the right parts the first time.

Collective Intelligence

To support our dealer efforts, we developed the MHMC and debuted it at CONEXPO-CON/AGG® with an impressive interactive display of its capabilities. Located inside John Deere Dubuque Works, where we design and build many of our machines, the MHMC is positioned strategically near our engineering teams, product experts, and assembly lines.

“Data coming off the machines may reveal an issue we can easily fix on the assembly line,” says Worthington. “It also provides information we can use to improve current and future features on our machines to provide more value to our customers.”

By aggregating and analyzing data from thousands of machines, the MHMC can identify trends that warrant a closer look. This helps us identify problems that may not surface on a local level and develop new, improved maintenance and repair protocols that the dealer can leverage.

The MHMC will help us be more able to predict downtime better than ever before and give our dealers a prescription for how to avoid it. “Our dealers are closest to the customer, but they are focused on a finite number of machines,” says Worthington. “By looking at the bigger picture, we can respond to issues that are affecting a broader population of machines much more quickly. And dealers will be able to leverage insight they wouldn’t have been able to obtain on their own.”

Through the support of your local John Deere dealer and the MHMC, you’ll be able to more effectively reduce downtime. “It’s pretty amazing, really,” says Worthington. “This experience is something vastly different than our customers have experienced before. We’re drawing on the collective intelligence of the entire machine population. Ultimately, we’re here to really focus on customers and keep them up and running. So they can run their world.”