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Iowa | I'd also suggest making things simple, reliable, and durable enough so that a person hired off the street with very limitted experience or ability could do a couple hundred hours of seasonal work with very short learning curve. A lot of seat time in crop farming is part time work, and most people with the kind of ability needed to operate these newer tractors allready have full time jobs. Others are not interested in a big learning curve for a part time job.
Given that my above expectations have not been taken seriously for the past twenty years and likely will not be taken seriously during the next twenty years, I'd suggest running all (or as much as possible) electronic functions through a common platform that is mass produced in the rest of the world, like a windows based lap top with a full keyboard (not a touch screen). Instead of throwing up some obscure error code, have it flash up on the screen what is really going wrong in English. Also, have it store a parts book and service manual in the hard drive. If something goes wrong with the lap top, it can easily and cheaply be replaced and from most anywhere. A spare computer and associated software could be kept next to the bolt bin. This stuff should all be servicable in the field by a novice. If it requires a techie to fix it and none are quickly available before the rain comes at 2:00 AM on Sunday morning, the product is unsupported as far as I'm concerned. The support is not there when I need it in cases like that, and the old stuff would not have had the problem in the first place.
Also, make the mechanical three point an option. A lot of us don't need to use it that much, and an electronic three point that does not cause problems is as rare as a mechanical one that did have problems in my experience.
Edit: I'll add that most of the time when something is wrong, it seems to be a sensor failure rather than a mechanical failure. If it is possible, I'd like to see the equipment built from the ground up to use common sensors that are easily replaced in the field and are interchangable throughout the equipment line. For example, as much as possible there would be one sensor for temperature, one for pressure, one for voltage, and one for shaft rotation. I'd be inclined to have a spare one of each in the cab. Also, if everything used the same sensors, I could take one off the combine to keep the planter tractor going in a pinch.
In general, I'd like to see engineers thinking more about things in those terms as if everything that could possibly go wrong will happen shortly before the rain comes on a Saturday night with the weight of the world hanging in the balance. It's all about getting the job done when it counts. Money spent on new equipment is pointless if it cannot do that.
Edited by tigger 3/25/2013 12:22
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What would you say to John Deere's tractor engineers?
