Stotz Equipment Ep 2 - Training the operators in Arizona | John Deere Tech at Work

So this year, weather's throwing everybody for a loop.

Surprisingly, we're fighting too much water right now with the rain instead of, you know, most people think it's a desert, we're out of water. But this year, it's a little different.

Yeah. Here in Arizona, most of these guys would normally be out pulling up rows so they can get ready to plant, but we can't get in the field.

So we don't plan for it. So now we're like, oh, crap. You know, we're on a time crunch.

When there's weather, it's going to affect our windows. So we have to make sure that we're ready to strike when the iron's hot. It is what it is. Right. It's just the way it works. Like, you just can't predict the weather. When we're really at crunch time, we want to make sure that we're actually using the technology to make sure that we're maximizing productivity. If there's rain coming and it's going to be dried for three more days, how many acres can I cover? Because we can see that based off of all this information that I have at my disposal, I know that I can actually get that job done in these next three days.

I mean, the meetings we have, they vary a lot with the customers. Like Donnie, the best way to have those conversations is over breaking bread and having lunch. So he really opened up to people.

Harry, you better cover up.

This is like man versus food.

Donnie is Sierra farming. They grow corn. They also do alfalfa, but primarily their focus is on cotton. And I'll change the names and make them all match the field names. With Donnie, we definitely got to try to help him with some maps. Things are always changing on the farm, and his struggle is within Work planner. He can't visualize that.

Most of the time, I know what fields are going to go in, but then depending on when the varieties show up, we won't know.

Yeah, you won't know the name, and.

We may have to. We have this variety. Planning on putting it in this field, but it's not here yet.

Well, so then you might have to.

Move a variety, put it in another.

Farm or another field, because it's not here yet. One of the struggles with all these different seed varieties is you can't plant this variety within a mile of that variety. And seeing that just in a list doesn't really help me understand that that variety is too close to this variety. I. I'm just thinking, like, if you just took a picture, like, you Just screenshot it and say, hey, I just changed the variety on this field. Can you get it updated in op center?

Yeah.

And then they'll just handle that. And then that way, as soon as you say, hey, we're good. Yeah, we want to start planting that and the. The meat farm.

Right, right.

Meek farms all set. The varieties are good. Then they can go create the jobs. Get them into the tractor, and then we're good to go.

There you go.

They're ready to go.

That's good.

So we have to try to figure out how we're going to help him visualize that and then communicate that back to us so that we can make the change and get it back into the machine. If that's working, I'll get all of the other farms added into that portal. That way we can have that communication portal open and then these guys will see it too.

Perfect.

Well, thanks for coming. Thanks for meeting us here for lunch. Brian is with A and B Farms. I think he's somewhere in the ballpark of 25,000 acres that he's got his hands in.

Good.

Hey, I got these. Here's the maps that we talked about. Well, with Brian, we need to work on the crop plan. We need to make sure that we're taking all the information that's communicated to us and then getting that into the operations center so it's ready to go. How are you on the cotton crop plan?

We're working on it.

We're still waiting on BASF and some of our seed partners on what varieties we're going to have and what's going where. But we should just make sure all the precision technology stuff is ready and.

Home screens and pages and all that stuff going.

I think the other thing we're going to work on with Brian is getting his operators trained better.

Yeah, that'd be a good time to do that.

The stuff changes every year, the software. So we have to set up a lot of trainings every year just to. Just to keep the operators up to date with what's coming out to get everybody up to speed so we don't run into any issues. You know, mid planning season when the operators get out in the field. If we're not teaching the operators, hey, this button does this now. Yeah, we're losing the value of the tractor, you know, what it could actually do.

So.

Yeah, no, I think that's really. We've talked about that too. And I think, you know, with your Spanish, you know, bilingual too. It's going to be helpful because some of the guys just you know, there's a language barrier. I mean, my Spanish is okay, but when it gets complicated, it can be hard for me to.

My Spanish is okay too. For the customers that we deal with here in Arizona, most of our operators speak Spanish and my Spanish is worse than their English. But having easy has really changed that game.

I grew up in this area, so Lane understands that. And 90% of the operators here know me personally from the past, just from my dad farming and whatnot. So when we go out and they see me, you know, out there with Lane and usually it's the workers, they're like, oh wait, this is different.

They've been very excited that EZ's been on the team to finally have somebody that speaks Spanish that they can call and talk to. So we're going to be here at the shop and then we'll go out to their farm after and actually do some hands on training in the tractors with the operators. Seeing where Brian's work planner is not.

Working or what, Something's wrong with it because he ran. They did.

We had to put it on teams. We just had the spinning wheel of death.

We can go fix that one.

So yeah. Brian Rhodes called this morning stating that work planner jobs that were sent to the machine didn't look like they got completed online. After we looked at it, we realized it was a software issue.

Basically what was happening is with the plans that we sent were not being executed on the machine, so we weren't getting the data we wanted to get.

It's all good.

Okay, well if you're, if you're there when we're out there, we'll look at it.

Okay.

Okay, we'll talk to you shortly.

Thank you.

Yep, see ya. I mean, every problem is different and I want to try everything I can as quick as I can. I want to be as efficient as I can. So yeah, my mind's just racing through ideas. You know, hey, who can I call, who can I text, who can I email? It's an overload of information. Usually when I come into a problem like that. Okay, so we just got done importing our work planner jobs to this tractor. So now we're going to drive into a boundary just to double check. Want to make sure that the second the tractor hits the boundary, the work planner job comes up, prompts you with what variety and seed we're planting with the correct rates. So we had to get a hold of the actual deer engineer and he said, yes, we know it's happening. Let me send you something over the air. He sent it over the air in a matter of minutes, we upload the software. We're going to drive forward, as the operator would, to getting to a field to start planting. As he gets closer to some boundaries, the work planner pops up. We now jump in that work group. We come here, we verify what we're doing. We're plants, we're seeding corn, silage, the variety and then the rate we selected for them. All right, we verified software, we verified the jobs are here, we tested it in the field. Now it's a matter of time until the operator gets here and we put it in the field and actually start planting Corn planting is right around the corner. So the trainings are real vital.

In the past, we've really got almost zero interaction from the operators. Having easy up there, it builds that confidence. I was just blown away at how much interaction there was. It was a really good experience, and I think it's really going to help the customer to be able to get better data because the operators understand what it's supposed to look like when they're in the machine. I think the operators are trained up really good. I think we're going to have a good season and they're going to start any day now. And the snow is starting to melt up in Idaho. So if we can make sure that we're on track for a good planting season in Idaho.