Deere & Company Implements Digital Technologies to Improve Operational Efficiency

Keywords: Digital Transformation, John Deere, Top 25, ARC Advisory, agricultural and construction equipment, dynamic logistics, production planning

The second annual ARC Industrial Digital Transformation Top 25 report continues to highlight companies that are succeeding at integrating digital technology into all areas of business, fundamentally changing the way they operate and deliver value to customers. This year’s Top 25 companies include many who made the list last year, together with some new companies. Positions were reshuffled due to the changing business dynamics and weighting components of the analysis: financial indicators, transformation indicators, and collective community intelligence. Deere & Company implements digital technologies to improve operational efficiency and the company ranks #13 in this year’s report.

The last few years have been particularly challenging ones for industrial growth. We’ve been cornered from all sides: pandemics, political unrest, climate change, and macroeconomic uncertainty. The world as we knew it a few years ago has capsized and the boundaries of the new normal are constantly shifting and realigning. Digital transformation is now an imperative and digital transformation leaders can be found across many different industries, sharing common traits and visions, helping organizations overcome complex challenges to innovate and stay agile. Several key trends were identified in this report: importance of sustainability, actively seeking to scale solutions in multiple dimensions, benefits of focus and prioritization, empowering the operational front line, recognition that culture change is required, and active outreach to others.

ARC Advisory Group defines digital transformation as: “The integration of digital technology into all areas of business, fundamentally changing the way companies operate and deliver value to customers. The organization is typically charged to innovate and improve across multiple dimensions such as: digital/disruptive technologies, culture and leadership, operational agility, workforce engagement, customer experience, environmental, social and governance, and competitive performance.”

This is the thirteenth in a series of blogs in the digital transformation space.

Deere & Company

Deere & Company, doing business as John Deere, is one of the largest manufacturers of agricultural and construction equipment in the world. The company uses digitalization to create more dynamic logistics and production planning, improve the visibility and accuracy of materials throughout the global supply chain and add the ability to customize real-time user instructions. Deere has been focusing on streamlining its end-to-end construction site operations through process automation. It has been investing and implementing digital technologies, such as AI, cloud, autonomous vehicles, IoT, drones and analytics to improve equipment efficiency and job site operations. Deere’s digital transformation starts from product designs and continues all the way through supporting the customers.

Deere has continually transformed itself to be more agile and project based. The company upped its investment to fuel its 5G and manufacturing and 4.0 ambitions. In addition to powering a new suite of high-performance computing analytics, 5G will enable the adoption of edge computing and autonomous devices as well as a larger set of smart applications like real-time location systems, asset tracking inventory management, wearables, production automation and robotics.

Road Ahead

Digital transformation is a continuous journey and ARC will continue its research in all areas related to digital transformation. We want to learn more about what is working – and what isn’t – as companies pursue their unique digital transformation activities. A lot is happening both on the supplier and user sides, and we would like to know about the pitfalls and success stories. The  ARC Industrial Digital Transformation Top 25 report will be published on an annual basis. With this being our second year, your feedback is very important to us as we will continue to investigate new approaches and measures to adjust our methodology, identify successful digital transformation initiatives, and help the industry as a whole digitally transform. We are on this journey together!

Learn more about ARC strategic research at Market Analysis