From America, comes news that McHale has just teamed up with a specialist repair company to ensure that the electronic components of its machinery range can be swiftly repaired and serviced.
The company concerned is Ag Express, which is based in Des Moines, Iowa. It has been in business for over 30 years, servicing and repairing electronic parts for agricultural machinery.
McHale has bought in to this experience to ensure that its machines can be kept running smoothly as the seasons mount up and the dust and toil take their toll.
Reliability of electronics
At some point, all machinery will need fixing and it was feared among the farming community that electronic components would rapidly fail when installed in farm machinery.
Yet, despite the few stories of unsolvable or expensive breakdowns circulating within the farming community, tractors and machinery have proved to be surprisingly resilient to electronic failures.
One American consumer group estimates that 80% of modern vehicle breakdowns are due to sensor failure, and while issues of this sort should be fixable at dealer level, that still leaves the joysticks, screens and control boxes to be serviced and this may be beyond the capabilities of the local franchise.
It is at this point that Ag Express steps in, for the North American market anyway.
Here in Ireland, there appears to be no equivalent and it is unclear just what arrangements there are for sorting the digital hardware of machinery of any make should it start to falter.
Not just McHale
This is not an abstract problem that need not bother farmers too much – a lot of equipment that has been sold over the past decade has some form of electronic control embedded within it, and to keep that machinery running will require a skill set that is not normally associated with farming.
One ray of hope is that much of the software is provided by third party suppliers and so the same control systems, adapted to the manufacturers particular needs and livery, will be found in different makes.
This commonality will greatly aid repair and should extend to the hardware components as well, yet there is still the need to bring it all together when problems occur, and we in Ireland appear to be ill served in that sphere at present.
Ag Express appears to be a purely American company, yet should such a service be available to machinery owners over here -then, some of the remaining resistance to ‘chips with everything’ may well be eroded.