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Hazelton, Kansas | Ben,
After reading the other posts (most of which I agree with), I thought a more general comment might be in order.
It relates to management. Institutions have life cycles. IMO, Deere's success was built on a history of decent products, backed by very good product support. They seemed to understand that their job was to help us produce food and fiber, etc. My impression is that their emphasis is shifting to the stockholder, and their objective is now to extract maximum revenue from the growers.
I don't appreciate deliberate attempts to build in maintenance demands and additional modes of failure. For example, electronics can be firewalled and otherwise built fail-safe. And if your engine designers can't design a water pump, you might want to give a Cummins B or C series a casual glance.
The industry is due for a new paradigm of product support. We dont all live within 15 miles of a dealer. Electronics service calls are expensive, and the company that is able to keep its customers in the field at the lowest cost should be successful, in the long run. Im not sure, but I think the future will involve machines with much more extensive self-diagnostics, and greater use of UPS and Fedex to deliver parts to the user. This needs to be backed by at least one well-stocked parts warehouse per state.
If Deere swings the door open (and, judging from the comments posted by others, they have many dissatisfied customers), some competitor (perhaps from another country) will sort this thing out and seize the opportunity. See Toyota.
So, my message to Deere is, in the long run it's about the customer, not the stockholder. Don't harvest us; help us harvest.
I'd better stop, as I have a 300 mile parts run to make today.
Regards.
MDS
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What would you say to John Deere's tractor engineers?
