CLAAS UK unveils digital cloud system and revamped HQ
THE Scottish Farmer recently travelled to CLAAS UK’s headquarters located near Saxham in the southeast of England, to explore its innovative premises and glean an insight into the all-new digital cloud-system, CLAAS connect.
The modernised building was completed in 2020 a er a three-year build, costing £20m and spanning 33,000m². It is also home to the local dealership Manns of Saxham.
Showroom
The eye-catching building comes fully kitted with a floor-to-ceiling glass front standing at 16.5m in height. Encased inside is the Technoparc showroom, featuring machinery ranging from the oldest machine on the site, a Super combine dating back to 1946, to new machinery including tractors, foragers and combines. Oces for IT, accountancy, finance and parts are also located within the upper floors, looking over the showroom.
The building utilises renewable sources of electricity from solar panels and a nearby 1.4MW anaerobic digestion (AD) plant. Water is also gathered from the roof’s 30,000-litre capacity harvesting system.
Workshop and parts warehouse
Continuing to the rear of the showroom, there is an impressive 10-bay workshop used by Manns with a vast 4336m2 parts warehouse, stocking dealers across both the UK and Ireland. It has storage capacity for more than 47,000 line items or 850,000 individual items, equating to a weight of 700t.
Making products easier to find is a scan and barcode system, which does an ecient job of tracing the 1000t of parts that are processed within the warehouse each year.
Some of the most popular items are bolts from combine headers, where a total of 55,000 were processed through the workshop last year alone.
CLAAS academy
CLAAS has expanded beyond the original HQ set-up with the addition of the CLAAS Academy. This provides a governmentfunded training facility for land-based engineering students, dealers, service and parts sta, as well as customers wishing to expand their machine operation knowledge. Here, 11 members of sta provide
nd in excess of 4000 hours’ training each year, with regular Ofsted inspections. Courses for students are largely centred around a 20% college and 80% workshop-infused approach.
Customer Experience Centre
However, the new set-up is not just about training, attention is drawn to the Customer Experience Centre.
Following a review, CLAAS decided that its eorts in exhibiting at shows and other field events le little opportunity for customers not only to view but to have a handson experience of the equipment.
This led to the creation of an all-new purposebuilt, all-weather testing track behind the main buildings. Complete with an encompassing oval test track including a ramp, the centre includes a sand arena for demonstrating auto steer technology, and for testing tractor loaders, telehandlers, and wheeled loaders, a rubber tyre crumb is used to represent maize and can safely be loaded, pushed up, or driven on in any weather conditions.
Groups of customers from across the UK now visit the Customer Experience Centre weekly.
CLAAS connect
The customer experience continues as CLAAS is in the latter stages of testing CLAAS connect, due to launch in October.
The virtual cloud programme looks to combine machine management, service planning and licence management with instruments including yield and application maps and documentation.
The new management tool oers improved communication between customer, dealer, manufacturer, and partnering company.
As of last October, all Arion, Axion and Xerion tractors, Jaguar forage harvesters, and both Trion and Lexion combines came fitted with a five-year machine connect licence. This allows opportunities for telematics, service planning, and transfer of information such as field and fertiliser applications via CEMIS online transfer.
However, a er the initial five years, operators using the telematics system will be transferred to the new system and must pay an annual licence fee, with that figure still to be confirmed.
Co-operating two components, CLAAS connect combines both Machine connect – which includes all machine information – and Fleet connect, containing field data such as yield maps and more. The plan is to combine both programmes into one cloud platform, enabling easier use.
From the get-go, customers already registered with CLAAS connect can access the CLAAS configurator directly via their CLAAS
ID, configure their desired
machine, and request a quotation or demonstration from their local dealer.
Following a purchase, the new machine can be automatically enlisted to the customer’s CLASS connect platform.
Information including the operator’s manual and key information such as lubricant types is also stored on CLASS connect.
Additionally, maintenance schedules are automatically added to machines with the five-year connect licence. This improves the eciency of dealerships by allowing them to plan service schedules ahead of time.
Telematic data including work data, tracks, and yield data is able to be analysed and documented in CLAAS connect.
With the addition of Fleet connect licence, third-party machines in mixed fleets can easily be connected to CLAAS connect via the DataConnect interface, allowing data including location, machine status, and current fuel and AdBlue levels to be displayed.
Partner companies are also able to receive machine data via the point data interface. However, to operate other brands within the system, operators will need to use connected modules on those tractors.
Collectively, performance data and settings from all CLAAS machines within one fleet on the platform can be viewed and analysed.
The system can be set up to notify the local CLAAS dealer of tractor alarms, and automatically produce a job card for that machine.
Farm connect
An additional add-on licence named Farm connect, alongside Field connect and Fleet connect, helps both farmers and contractors with options regarding precision farming.
They are able to plan potential and application maps from geodata including satellite images and soil analyses, with the added ability to lay out field boundaries using SHAPE or ISO-XML files.
Yield maps can also be merged between multiple machinery working within the same field to create a singular map, for example, two combines working together.
Fleet connect routinely documents field-specific task data relating to yield, constituents, or application rate, allowing the status and progress of pre-planned tasks to be tracked in real time on the operator’s phone, tablet, or laptop. It is also possible to create reference lines and plan tracks founded on field boundaries in Fleet connect.
Security
With the threat of cybersecurity a constant battle for firms including CLAAS, with up to 35,000 attacks each week, CLAAS has created a new digital division. As CLAAS connect runs through the final stages of testing, it is understood that it has enlisted militarygrade security to all online platforms.
Conclusion
Overall, the facilities available within the upgraded CLAAS headquarters oer nextlevel customer support and bring a truly welcoming experience to farmers and contractors which goes beyond the factory doors, and allows customers to learn about and better understand their equipment.