Supply chain issues affecting the availability of new machines and parts for the old ones has made an option adopted in Europe a necessity in America.
A new program from CNH Industrial Reman allows farmers to give added life to their old machines when they would otherwise face downtime due to obsolete electronic parts.
The program provides a repair option for electronic parts that are no longer available, along with remedying extended supply chain issues in the market by avoiding delays when new replacement parts are limited or experiencing long lead times.
According to Travis Stewart, product manager for electronics at CNH Industrial Reman, the program also offers a major cost-saving opportunity as farmers can spend less money to repair an electronic part than to replace it with a new one.
“An older machine may be more cost-sensitive to repairs based on the value of the machine,” he said. “Owners may look for a less expensive option, and repair instead of a new replacement as an alternative.”
In some cases, repair is the only alternative because new replacement parts are no longer produced, especially for tractors and machinery made before the 1990s, Stewart said.
“With current market conditions impacting the delivery of new machines, we are seeing larger than normal demand for older machine parts support,” he said. “That’s what makes the electronic repair program so important. New parts for older equipment may be obsolete and no longer available. Our resources can repair and sometimes reverse-engineer obsolete electronic components that are critical for machines to operate.”
Prior to the supply chain issues that worsened during the pandemic, owners of older machinery didn’t face much downtime if an electronic part malfunctioned. In those instances, a dealer could diagnose the problem, order a new part and have the machine ready to go in a couple of days, according to Stewart.
Under the new repair program — the result of CNH Reman working with vendors such as Breizelec Inc. to broaden access to repaired electronic parts — some of the repairs are performed in France and can take up to two weeks.
But Stewart said they are stocked in distribution centers in the United States and Canada, which offers a supply of repaired electronic parts which allows for quick shipping.
Working with companies that already have repair and redesign electronics capabilities as well as understand how the machinery works, CNH Reman can repair parts that otherwise might not be available.
“That’s the case with approximately two-thirds of the parts — we have them in inventory and we can send them to a supplier or dealer in anticipation of unique demands, such as planting or harvest season,” Stewart said. The remaining one-third are sent in for repair.
The repair program is available through authorized dealers for Case IH, New Holland Agriculture and Construction, and Case Construction, and Stewart said that since the program was implemented in early 2021 it’s generated approximately $2 million in business.
He anticipates the program will soon approach $4 million in sales as more electronic control units are installed on machines.
This year alone, he added, demand for parts has increased upwards of 20% over last year.
There are roughly 2,300 CNH Industrial dealerships in North America, and each one has access to the parts through the electronic repair program, Stewart said. Dealers appreciate the access to parts and being able to stock certain electronic components because of the high demand.
“We’re in a position to get the capabilities at the dealerships to support the customers when it comes to obsolete electronic parts. If we aren’t working with dealers to grow their businesses, we aren’t going to grow ours, either,” Stewart said. “They now have access to a majority of these electronic parts to have them for their customers the next day, solving a supply chain issue that resulted in costly downtime.”
