How Digital is the Agricultural Equipment Sector?

The status of digitalization within the top agricultural players
Dirk Pfitzer | Andreas Baier | Dr. Jan Cachay | John Salib | Daniel Manz
Jun 2019 | Study | English

How Digital is the Agricultural Equipment Sector?

Digitalization has played an important role in agricultural engineering for more than 20 years now. Experts in the field were working on digital apps, connectivity, and autonomous systems long before their counterparts in the automotive industry, and these use cases have developed into real, available products and applications. But how high is the degree of digitalization in the industry today? To what extent are companies using big data? To what degree are they digitalizing their internal processes? 

For this study, Porsche Consulting surveyed the largest agricultural engineering companies worldwide on growth, customer experience, efficiency, and enablers. The study shows how companies can further advance digitalization in order to become digital champions themselves.

20 years

assistance systems have been available in farm vehicles long before being implemented in the automotive industry.

30%

of added value have been contributed by smart farming vehicles since 2015.

55% 

of all respondents said that they offered ‘smart products’ to a ‘high’ or ‘very high’ extent.

Management Summary
  • The most digitalized firm in this study is characterized as a company with more than 5,000 employees that has distinct characteristics in all questioned criteria and even stronger characteristics in product-specific digitalization topics – in which there are three sub-categories: digital products, digital platform concepts and digital natives in the workforce.
  • The customization of individualized products for clients based on Big Data, as well as the development of purely digital products, are at earlier stages.
  • Real-time information for customers and company-wide internal processes are present to a fairly low extent, however, transparency and process communication remain a key factor in accelerating digitalization.
  • Digital strategies are widely available, but the use of digital processes and key performance indicators for standardizing operations could be improved upon.

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