AGCO Spring 2010 : Page 8special report: transition What do you feel are the needs of professional farmers today, and how is AGCO meeting those needs? In my opinion, it comes down to productivity, productivity and more productivity.fiere are many things that make up productivity. It can mean downtime, quality and functionality of the product, parts support, customer service support, and also the relationship the customer has with his dealer. However, I think it always goes back to the piece of equipment we supply from AGCO helping our customers become more productive. Of course, our customers are also facing a great deal of volatility right now, not only in the commodity marketplace, but in the economic challenges that affect their business. So, I think that, in some ways, we are all in a similar position. We all need to use this opportunity to make ourselves stronger and to position our businesses to take advantage of the situation when we see improvement in the economy. What are the greatest challenges facing manufacturers today? One major challenge is the global nature of today’s business, for example. fie Tier 4 emissions standards are huge, requiring tremendous investment—tens of millions of dollars. In addition, the resources involved in bringing a product to market today, in terms of both money and people, are immense. At the end of the day, to be a company that supplies our customers with the best-in-class product in the industry—not a competitive product, but the best product—youmust clearly understand the needs of your local customers, yet balance the need to better focus your resources from a global perspective as necessary. 8 ADVANTAGE / SPRING 2010 How has that affected AGCO’s decision to consolidate the product line? Resources are finite; that’s the real world. And we have to spend our resources the best way possible to bring the best value to our customers. So we made the difficult, even gut-wrenching decision to consolidate our tractor brands. I realize it is an emotional issue for many of our customers, dealers and our own employees. However, I am 100-percent conTdent it was the right decision for our long-term future if AGCO is going to provide our customers with best-in- class products in the industry. We think one of our greatest assets as a company is our understanding of our customers’ needs.ffiWe have a number of people on board who have been through numerous brand changes before.ffi So we’re very sensitive about how this will affect our customers and we understand the emotion. fiat’s one of the reasons this change is not happening today or next month. It is a transition that will take place over a period of slightly more than 12 months. What do you see as the greatest benefits of the consolidation? I spent 4 years in engineering and we always used the term “faster, better and less expensive” when speaking of product development. I’m conTdent that this is what this change will do for us—allowing us to bring our customers newer technology faster than ever before in better products that are cost competitive. Fortunately, the vast majority of our AGCO customers understand that to do that, we have to have a razor focus on our resources in designing and building the best products in the industry. How will this change affect the other products that have traditionally been offered by the AGCO dealers, such as GLEANER® combines? The change we announced last year only involves the orange AGCO tractor brand. Our GLEANER combine line remains unaffected. In fact, as we speak, we’re investing more money in the GLEANER combine line than we have in the history of AGCO. Part of my background in engineering was spent developing combines, and I am very pleased to say that the things we have coming from GLEANER in the months and years ahead are truly exciting. In the meantime, our customers will Tnd that, in the majority of cases, their relationship with their dealer will not change at all, especially when it comes to the service and support of GLEANER, Sun ower, Hesston andWhite Planter products. In most cases, those dealers will transition to the Massey Ferguson or, in some situations, the Challenger brand as their anchor brand. Q+A Bob Crain with photos: rob lagerstrom Publication List |
