John Deere upgrades its Operations Centre online farm management tool

Machine monitoring, tracking input application and record-keeping have reached new levels of precision and user-friendliness with the latest update to John Deere’s Operations Centre online farm management system.

Operations Center provides simple but powerful management tools that enable access to farm data anytime and anywhere via a browser, tablet, or smartphone.

The most useful new improvements for farmers include the expansion of John Deere’s input product database, and the addition of a feature that indicates “estimated time remaining” for tasks to be completed in the field.

John Deere Australia and New Zealand precision agriculture manager Benji Blevin said the improvements would directly increase productivity for farmers’ businesses through “time-saving and management insights”.

“Prior to this update, growers in Australia had to manually input their own product information into Operations Center, which led to errors in record keeping and ultimately unusable data,” he said.

“Now customers can select products from more than 3500 varieties, 5000 chemicals, and almost 1000 fertiliser products specific to Australia, ensuring they are capturing accurate records against farm operations including product name, brand, and registration number.

“This is an important update, as products form a key part of digital work plans that can be sent to machines wirelessly, ensuring that the right product is applied to the right fields and with the right rates.

“It will also improve the data available for farmers to make improved decisions for the next season.”

With the new estimated time remaining feature, farmers can receive Uber-like updates on the efficiency of multiple machines in a paddock.

Mr Blevin said the mobile feature provided farm managers with near real-time estimates.

“Estimated time remaining applies data science to current and historical productivity to provide an accurate calculation of how long it will take a single machine or multiple machines to complete field work,” he said.

“The calculation, which updates every five minutes, is based on a number of factors such as turn times and machine configuration.

“Now farmers will know, to the minute, how long it will take to complete the work in the field before the rain sets in or the exact time a tender truck needs to meet the sprayer.”

Another new feature included in the update allows managers to track the amount of time a machine stays idle.

“A timer begins when any equipment begins idling and continues counting up until the machine is back in action again,” Mr Blevin said.

“All these machine monitoring features alert farmers on potential inefficiencies in their operations, and provide invaluable insights for the better management of labour and flow of operational activity.”

The improvements also include new machine analyzer updates, which allow farmers to compare the performance of older machines no longer in use with new equipment, providing valuable insights into the performance of machinery investments.

A new equipment management tool enables farmers to view and manage their entire fleet in one place, including machines, implements, and precision ag devices.

And an improved map page has simplified the monitoring of fieldwork and equipment from the office, allowing farmers to select multiple partner organisations to view equipment information, as well as visualise complete location history including direction of travel and a time filter.