John Deere Construction and Forestry Co. of Moline, Ill., and QUALCOMM Inc. of San Diego, provider of business-to-business wireless enterprise platforms, applications and services, recently announced an alliance to create an equipment- and machine-monitoring and information-delivery system that will be sold across North America by certified John Deere construction and forestry dealers.
Beginning in fall 2006, customers will be able to order factory- or dealer-installed JDLinks on select John Deere equipment. The JDLink automatically collects, transmits and manages information about where and how equipment is being used, as well as critical machine health data for superior equipment utilization, improved productivity and increased revenue.
The system leverages QUALCOMM's GlobalTRACS equipment-management system to provide customers with vital information about equipment location, machine health and service status. It also issues special alerts to notify customers if equipment moves outside pre-set boundaries.
"Having this real-time information system will enable customers to save time and costs, maximize their equipment utilization and uptime and improve their overall service," said Ken Poppe, product-marketing manager, advanced technology for John Deere.
Four levels of service will be offered with JDLink. The standard level will provide owners with machine location status, machine service hours and location-monitoring capabilities. The advanced level of service will provide customers with the standard level, plus dash indicators and fuel and equipment-utilization information via engine-load monitoring.
The ultimate level of service expands upon these offerings by adding current and stored monitoring of component pressures and temperatures, fuel consumption, as well as transmission gear selection and full-featured diagnostic information retrieval.
The direct level enables customers to download machine-operating history and diagnostics directly to a laptop. The advanced, ultimate and direct levels of service will be available in 2007 on select models of John Deere equipment, while the standard level of service will be available by fall 2006.
"John Deere and QUALCOMM continue to demonstrate their commitment to drive value to customers," said Larry Cleary, vice president and general manager of construction equipment for QUALCOMM Wireless Business Solutions. "Through this alliance, QUALCOMM and John Deere are creating an innovative solution that will advance the forestry and construction industries to a new level of operational intelligence."
