Behind the scenes at CLAAS HQ

morning we're here at class UK I'm here as well as our three combine operators and Simon our farm engineer to learn what these combines have to offer and how we can drive them to get the most out of them this coming season class UK have kindly given us access to their training center today uh we're going to be looking at how to um really optimize output and efficiency of our machines um we're going to look around the uh part Center here and uh we're also going to be looking around the class Academy where they train all their apprentices and technicians right hi guys my name is Rob Portman I'm the combined product manager here at class UK uh my role essentially in the UK is to support our dealers so I would be the link between Class UK as a distributor and our dealer Network itself so again if the sales guys if they like of mans James's dealer needs a bit of support then we can support mans we can support James and Tom with the likes of any of their specific questions be that on the combines which is what I specialize in um you join us here today for our operators training courses so we run operators training courses through the months of May and June for all of our operators that have purchased new combines for this harvest season so for this year I think we're roughly around about the just over 2 to 250 people Mark um quite a lot of people to get through the door A lot of people to train and that's the key role for us really is to we're not expecting operators to jump on the seat and know everything straight away of course so we invite them here to Saxon which is what we're doing with the PX Farm guys today and essentially we're going to take them through all the different areas of the combine you need to know the maintenance the adjustments the optimization all the key things that we need to know to get the very best out of the machines we've got behind us in the field because of course at the end of the day you can put a combine in the field but if the operator doesn't know all the buttons and how everything works correctly then they can either do a very good job or maybe a slightly worse job in that in that fact as well so that's what we're going to see now you'll see us today cover a lot of different stations um you'll see different areas of the machine whether it be the cutter bar the combine itself and as I've said the optimization points and you can see that we're going to do that with some of the rigs in and around the room today as well so as I said hope you enjoy what you see um and again if you do maybe purchase a machine in the future then we'd like to see your face and we'd like to see you here at saxum as well so what we've essentially done here is for this station we pull the physical armrest out of the machine we've got to the right hand side that for us helps The Operators understand as I say some of the buttons some of the functionalities so the likes of our new lexian combines we have new touchscreen abilities with the new screen we have new functions options on the right hand side and we have some changes to the joystick as well so again it really gives the guys and girls a bit of an idea as to again how to get in how to adjust some of the settings what things that we can get in and we don't have to try and cram 20 people into the cab of a combine which is obviously not something that's very ideal to do so not just with that we also have the props again I can shout at people I I'm point it when I've got 20 people sat in front of us so again try and explain the very best as to what we can also achieve and then also in the background we've got our simulator system so not only have we got the armrest essentially pulled up out out of a real machine we've actually then developed a simulator system which is taking the combine canas so the basic um understanding the computer system of the combine and we can actually then put that through a computer based system and we can simulate essentially the machine working in real life crop as well so obviously today it's a very very wet June day or May Day I should say sorry um but essentially this gives us the opportunity I can talk to the guys and girls about loss optimization I can talk about the seos the automatic features if they have them and I can talk a little bit about what settings we maybe need to adjust to try and again fine-tune the combine if we're seeing maybe a little bit too much rotor loss a bit too much separation loss I can show the guys and girls as to which way we can um we can work the machine essentially for that reason and the nice thing for us it really does give the operators a bit of a um an interactive feel to it it's not just me talking presentation slideshow of a 100 slides and talking through it it gives the guys and girls a bit of an opportunity to actually ask questions maybe they've had a scenario where they've had a combine in the past and they want to know what to do and that's the that's what we try and do we try to make it as again as interactive and as uh yeah open as possible for those very reasons good so you now join us alongside our actual machine in the in the workshop itself this is lexine 8900 uh that we've borrowed um what we do in this station we do it in two different ways so the very first thing we do is we get the guys we get the likes of Tom and John and Aaron they'll take the guys and the girls around the machine and we focus more so on the maintenance points um obviously for many operators today they are they know their machines in and out and they'll be spending a lot of time with their machines not just with it working but of course doing the greasing process doing the adjustments process and of course we want to give them all the knowledge that we can to be able to give them the ability to maybe spot if something's not quite right or if something isn't quite right then how to adjust it and again maybe maintain that machine as well so we do it for the likes of the adjustment systems we do it for the greasing points because of course on our new generation lexans we launched them back in 2019 uh we changed a lot of the maintenance elements of the combines compared to the previous combin so for james' combines obviously the maintenance elements will be very different on the new generation so we show the guys and the girls we again greasing points how to grease them why we're doing so we show them again the tensioning of the belt so our main Drive Line the whole drive line of the combine itself has changed quite substantially so again how we're tensioning those belt units up and what we're going to do with those belt units as well and then of course things we can look out for to so again as harvest happens in an ideal situation it' be great if it was 15% crop all the all the year through or the or the Harvest through um it never is so for the wetter heavier climates we have over here in the UK which is of course a thing as today shows then of course there's going to be potential where there's going to be more hardship on the combines especially in certain areas of the of the machines as well so we like to keep the operators up to date as to where those areas may be again if there's maybe a tension or a pulley they have to look at a little bit more intensely as the season goes on and that's something we like to do on this stage we try and be as white as white because at the end of the day we're not trying to sell you the combine at this point theine machine is sold we'd much rather be it from an operator's point and talk about the benefits and try and talk about how we're going to get the very kind of best out of the machine itself for those reasons so that's what we're try and focus on in this area so again operators really that's what we're trying to focus on trying to get them to be able to know the machine what to look after now there is always going to be a service a dealer element too if something goes terribly wrong for whatever reason then of course there's going to be some things we wouldn't expect the farmer the operator to look after as well so that's where any of our dealers in the UK they are actually then of course licensed and trained to do the very same work on these machines to a much higher rate or much much more knowledgeable level so again that's what we also do here in the academy the academy guys during the winter will take all of our dealer staff or all of our technician staff into the workshops and of course they'll run through various different courses now that might be on the likes of the combine it might be on the cutter bars it might be on any of our other products as well tractors forage as the list goes on and on one thing we do do a little bit differently as well is all of our Engine Systems so the engines of course we fit in our combines where they are not made by clasps they'll be made by Mercedes M cumins any of those manufacturers but the nice thing for us is we as class are licensed to look after those engines so if there was an engine problem then we wouldn't expect the engine manufacturer to come out and fix it because they don't always maybe work in all of the Harvest hours we of course then can license our dealers to work on the engines too so we have our own engine training facilities here at class UK as well so that means man's the dealer for example today they could go out and they can actually work on the cutter bar the combine the GPS system but also the engine and the power units as well so that's what we're trying to do is to give us the best coverage and the best level of support we can from a cuk point of view and from a dealer point of view as well so what we essentially do um through telematics we use telematics for a lot of various different bits as you'll know so we can put obviously all your yield data we can look at your Maps we can look all your campaign reports um but we also then have the combine leaderboard so essentially what this does takes all the combines in the UK takes all their data we can actually then input um you as a customer can input what crop you're cutting and you can put your serial number in and then actually will give you a bit of a gauge as to how you're kind of Performing against let's say some other machines in the UK it's not really uh we don't use it as a kind of a um who's the best and how that works of course some some ways some people like to look at it that way for us really it gives you the opportunity that you can get a bit of a scope as to what everyone's doing so if you're maybe thinking go this is a bit of a hard day cutting is everyone else limited then it gives you an idea that maybe everyone else is struggling a bit as well so it maybe takes the worry away there is also the optimization level so if you do think go there's some combines here that we can see they're doing a bit more tonnage than we are you can actually click in and you can see what V variety they're running you can sometimes see their names if they're willing to put the name in but you can also see their settings as well so if you said okay I'm running my drum at this speed and I concave at that size and let's try maybe running it at a slightly different um size as well so those customers if you have Coss of course Coss will try and adjust your settings but not everyone does of course so that gives them the opportunity that they can go in and have a look at some of the settings and a bit of a play so customers always like to see where am I on the combine leaderboard today make sure try and get themselves up as high as they can possibly go and that that's uh that in their heads then means that they know they've got the machine well optimized as well some people never look at it but it's just a another side of things a bit of fun we also have and we can um try and help you guys out as well just to make life a little bit easier yeah so uh hi there my name is John and I'm the senior technical trainer here at Clash k for the appren program uh our appr program has been running inhouse for 3 years now so 2021 is when we officially started and we are now on our third cohort of uh apprentices com through prior to this appren program was running from 2001 and we used third party colleges for this uh scheme but we wanted to bring this inh house to give us more control and to really emphasize and really push in the detail we wanted for our prips to increase a standard to our Engineers out in the field and to our dealerships and realistically to our customers as well so we brought our our in house in 2021 and since then the program has been growing and growing and growing starting off with cohort of 10 and we're now here in 2024 with a cohort of 22 looking to increase that to 30 cohort in this September of this year so increasing again and again and again I'm currently in one of our appren workshops uh this is part of our engine block so this block of uh of three weeks is for our engines uh of our apprenticeship so the the delegates are looking uh looking the delegates are using and looking at engines across the whole spectrum of the range so not just uh big V8 engine but also a little inline 4 engine even two strokes so they understand the whole concept of engines from the very beginning to the very end of the whole engine uh concept not only are they just looking at the engines but they're also pulling apart as you can see here so we're taking the engine from Bare Bones straight across to uh an engine over here where we've got uh it fully pulled apart with cranks out and cams out we're talking about cooling systems we talking about firing orders talking about fuel types we're even putting the machines on the dyno and then testing the engine from start to finish so it's engines in a nutshell over the 3 weeks uh of of this block that isn't only thing we deliver part of our prip we also look at fabrication so we have a dedicated fabrication shop with eight welding Bays with both Mig Arc and TIG welding we have bench feing facilities for hand skills plastic cutting oxetene cutting and we also have our machine shop with three lays and two Mills to really hone that precision and that precise engineering skills we want from our our apprentices going forward this is just in year one as well so engines is the end of year one fabrication start of year one going into year 2 year three and year four we're then looking at electrics Hydraulics and to do this we've got our own dedicated Hydraulics lab we've got our own dedicated electrics lab taking the wheels off the machine is what I often say we don't want the engineers to ever think I can only work on one product that's all I I I have work on the dealership so in our Hydraulics lab or electric lab we talk about hydraulics in the concept hydraulic is a Hydraulics regardless if it's on a combine a Bor or on a tractor same Electric El so in the Hydraulics electric Labs we're able to just deliver electric and hydraulics and then transplant that information back onto the machine so they can see what they've learned across all machines rather than just the one machine they prefer or used to work on as we go into the year three we're now looking at our major components and our machines so we're now looking at our combines our foragers our drills our cultivators our sprayers uh our our Drive LS so looking at uh CV CVT transmissions and mechanical Transmissions or machines but it's not just class we are in a class buden today I'm still Hearing in my in my class clothing but it is about the whole industry so we deliver a landbased level three apprenticeship standard that means across the industry not just for class so today class don't offer a full hybrid combine sorry full rotor combine like like case do with their axle flow so we do com mines we will talk about the case actual flow we do not offer an electric Drive machine as some of our competitors do do so we talk about electric Drive machines if it's in the if it's in this industry today we talk about it because it's part of the industry standard that we we're delivering so it's not just what class sell it's what we cost have cost the entire industry uh we have today and then when we get into our year four groups we're now looking at the advanced topics so we're now looking at GPS uh optimization infield Diagnostics and really pushing that dios skills so at the end of the four years when they go through their EPA and they have signed off as a fully qualified landbase level three engineer they've done everything from basic fabrication to Machining to engines to Transmissions to Hydraulics to electrics to Diagnostics to GPS they are the full package what we can then give back to our dealers and give back to our our customers and we can we have confidence that our Engineers that we've trained are the best that they can be so we're in our uh fabrication shop at the moment and this is a big part of and represents a big part of the uh finan investment that class UK has put onto project previously we did not have this this facility at class UK we were purposely delivering Technical Training so how the new combine the new bay the new tractor and what's changed and how we repair it which is absolutely perfect for our technicians in the field but for the new generation coming through to learn those skills we need to needed to invest so the biggest part of the investment was spent here in our uh uh fabrication shop where we have eight welding Bays each welding Bay has its own Mig its own TIG its own arc setup we have a dedicated plasma oxan Bay we have uh our own teaching wers in the back around over here so that we can bring the group around and do a demonstration live on our benches so that everyone can see what's happening and in the next building across we have our LA and machine shop now we are fully aware that not every dealership in in our uh Network uses laes and machining and we but at the same time we don't want to just teach them how to just well we want to teach them the principles the the Precision the UN the underpinning knowledge of engineering so we talk about Precision if you're on a Mill and you're talking about half a millimeter that's very precise so when they're now reading a gearbox and it it has a shim that's half millimeter they understand how precise they need to be so it's not just how to turn a bit met into a shape or how to W bit more together it's that whole concept uh of making that Apprentice that much more rounded much more precise much more better engineer for for our dealers and for our end users customers right so you join us in our cuuk Parts Warehouse so this for cuk is our main Distribution Hub for parts so to support the likes of our dealer Network the way it generally works is for machine down the dealer hopefully has the part behind the shelf or in their own parts department if they don't then of course it then comes to class UK and this is where we distribute the parts out to the dealers and we're stocking all of our parts inventory for any of our products in the UK be it combines foragers tractors the list goes on if for whatever reason we don't have it on the Shelf then that's when we then have to go over to Germany to ham which is again the global distribution center and that's where we then sending the parts either into class UK or more so direct the dealer to keep the downtime down so we as cuk have obviously had a big Redevelopment on the building um and big part of that was the parts distribution centering here today so we've made a lot bigger we couldn't go too further much back because of the Railway that comes down the back of the site so we had to go taller and we had to spread the building out as well so the main point for us really is to try and stock a lot larger amount of Parts here a lot more of a value and to obviously keep a better inventory of Parts here in the UK because we are of course trying to sell more products but it's also to give the customers and the dealers trying to a better level of backup and we do Pride ourself on that as class for backup levels is what we've tried to achieve in the past and that's what we're trying to achieve in a better form today as well so we're stocking somewhere close to about 12 million worth of parts per day and andan that number does fluctuate as we go into Harvest of course we try and stock a lot more parts as well and that would be with a team of anywhere between maybe 8 to 14 depending if it's harvest season or out of harvest season as well so you can kind of see the the scale of the site and what we've increased and how we've made it bigger with the the building we're in now right so you now join us in mans of saxum so we have cuk have it a little bit differently we have cuk as one part of the building site and we have the other part the site as mans mans the dealership so mans of course have several locations spread across East Anglia and M mans of saxum is the headquarters of that site and that's what you see here today so with the updates we updates we made to the main building we of course then updated the likes of the workshops for the mans of saxum guys too so you see see some new facilities here new crane systems new filtering systems for the lubrication on the machines and again it's a much better environment for the guys and girls here to work amongst as well so you can even see the machines behind me they're in the in the workshop it might be for one of any reason so again obviously there's service work if there's any breakdown work but of course PDI work as well so again you can see some machines being PDI in the background and you can also see some combines coming in for the winter Service as well so again the facilities we've got here is something we try and replicate across most of our linked dealers in the UK and then of course we have our independent dealers again which are another big part of our business and they will be supporting the class product but alongside maybe some of franchisees of um products as well so I say a big part of our combine business of course is our lexian product range but we also now start offering our Treon product range as well so obviously with James's machines we're looking at lexian 8700s but our treeon product range stretches amongst five walkers six Walkers and hybrid combines too so the machine you actually see behind me is one of our cuk demonstrators from last year it's a six Walker Tron and trons actually equate for almost 50% of our combined business in the UK so this machine is now in the process of going through its service stage winter service stage before it is then handed over to the customer that's purchased it it'll have the changes done and if there's any updates that need to be made to the combine between this year and last they'll be done too and then finally what happens is it goes for its Ving stage as well so the machines will be valeted here in house and essentially then as the machines then work their way out to the customer then of course they're nice and clean and we're not going to be carrying any contaminated soil or ground into the next customer's farm right you join us outside in the rain now nice and lovely weather but behind me you can see part of the man's business so again mans as a company have obviously the new sales but of course we have or they have the secondhand machinery sales as well so the building you see behind me is actually the man's Used Machinery Center so the idea of the building is even if you're buying a secondhand machine of course you'd still expect to get the full treatment as if you were buying a new machine because of course at the end of the day secondhand Machinery of course is also worth a bit of money as well so in what the guys do from mans is they valot the machines and if the machine is secondhand and it's not been sold then it actually goes into the building behind me or if it's maybe some of the smaller cultivation machiner you can see it's out here outside as well and essentially that keeps it nice and stored and safe away over the winter and then if we have any customers or if mans have any customers that want to come and see the products during the winter months they've got somewhere nice and contained inside they can go and see the products right guys and girls um I hope you've enjoyed your quick behind the scenes as to what we've got going on here at class UK now there's a lot more obviously to see that we couldn't cover today hopefully it shows some of the parts of our business and what we're trying to achieve not just with the saxum site but also with what we're doing in our UK dealer networks as well both from a sales and a support point of view which for both of us um for both sides of those business businesses again are just as important as the next so again looking after the machines taking care of them and also then developing and pushing the machines on in the future whether that be for combines for foragers front of our Green Line machinery and also of course the tractors like you see behind me too we had a great day at class UK at saxum yesterday learned Lots about our new machines and really excited to seeing the performance improvements this coming Harvest

Channel: P.X. Farms Ltd

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Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024