How John Deere, 185, is embracing digital transformation

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John Deere is known for its industrial-grade agricultural, forestry and heavy-duty equipment, as well as its consumer lawn care line.

But many probably don't realize that it also incorporates cutting-edge features including AI, computer vision, data analytics, digital twins, sensors, robots and co-bots, proving that 185-year-old manufacturing companies can go through digital transformation, too.

In June, we reported on how John Deere is using AI to collect data. At VentureBeat's Transform 2022 event last week, its CIO Ganesh Jayaram reiterated that and highlighted other innovative efforts the company is making to propel it forward.

"You can think of it as 'Industry 4.0,'" John Deere CIO Ganesh Jayaram said during a live keynote during Transform 2022 last week.

State-of-the-art manufacturing

John Deere's technology strategy is built around two principles, says Jayaram: the public cloud and the edge.

“Both are necessary,” he said. It's just a matter of defining what types of workloads take place and where.

The edge is great for low-latency applications, "where you really don't have time to send information back to the cloud."

For John Deere, that advantage is in factory and warehouse operations, Jayaram said. The company extends its knowledge to the edge and invests in private server networks.

"We're trying to drive computation and analysis, to leverage intelligence at the edge, as close to the point of impact as possible," he said. "We want to translate intelligence to the edge so that high-bandwidth, low-latency applications can run there."

The manufacturing tech stack

Along with this, Jayaram described an emerging technology stack. The best way to conceptualize this in the world of manufacturing is to combine IT and OT, i.e. adding manufacturing components to a basic computing stack.

The top layer of this stack combines apps and analytics. Just below is the data platform. Underneath are connectivity platforms and software (enterprise resource planning software, for example). Finally, hardware and services. And cybersecurity runs through this stack layer, Jayaram explained.

At the end of the day, data drives it all, he said. The company has invested heavily in what it describes as a "John Deere Data Factory" including a data lake.

“This core analytics function needs to be based on really reliable data that crosses our internal [manufacturing, engineering, supply chain] silos,” Jayaram said. "We bring in these different data streams, organize the data, and ensure that the data is of the highest quality, that it's well cataloged."

Agile operations

To further drive innovation, John Deere has implemented an agile operating model across the company.

For example, the same principles and concepts applied to software development are put into practice in the workshop.

"It's not uncommon to find these (manufacturing) teams teeming with ideas or challenges," Jayaram said. "Teams come together, they're full of ideas and really try to find a solution in a few days."

Since deploying the model, support incidents have decreased, client functionality has increased two to three times, and the number of deployments has increased tenfold.

“Our teams are loving this new customer-centric way of working,” Jayaram said.

And even further?

Answering the inevitable question about the metaverse, Jayaram said that John Deere is...