The John Deere Construction & Forestry division is an industry leader, offering a wide range of high- quality, inventive construction and forestry equipment to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers worldwide. The division was established in the mid-1950s and currently has more than 600 dealer locations worldwide. Serving customers who are linked to the land through earthmoving, roadbuilding, building construction and timber harvesting, this division prides itself on exceptional performance, disciplined growth and aligned teamwork.
John Deere has worked with Ken Cook Co. for many years, particularly in the digital age. John Deere has come to rely on the Ken Cook Co. partnership to provide innovative solutions to complex challenges, most recently with their digital bookstore and publishing processes. They chose Ken Cook Co. to add multi-lingual support to the bookstore publishing system, which Ken Cook Co. previously developed.
The Challenge
John Deere continues to grow globally and introduce new technologies, and it needed to produce multi-language operator’s manuals for ever-more-specialized equipment. The current publishing system was originally designed for processing single-language manuals. John Deere approached Ken Cook Co. with this business challenge, sharing their vision and how it could be worked into their existing publishing process.
John Deere’s biggest challenge with this project was implementing these changes during an extremely fiscally conservative time in their business cycle. Ultimately Ken Cook Co. was able to provide John Deere with the functionality they needed that worked for their budget.
The Solution
Ken Cook Co. worked quickly by collaborating with John Deere users on the process flow, getting the updates made within a few weeks. John Deere tested the system out, and the multi-language manual flowed through the new automated publishing process without a hitch.
Developed by Ken Cook Co., the programmed and hosted publishing portal works with several John Deere systems and helps control the workflow, archiving and printing of manuals. The portal also feeds the John Deere bookstore maintained by Ken Cook Co. The system gathers information from technical authors, illustrators and editors, allowing the John Deere bookstore administrator to select a language or multiple languages and add any additional information to activate the project in the system. The system robot then selects the appropriate workflow and moves the files through each step. Ultimately, the file also goes to the digital bookstore hosted by Ken Cook Co. and/or the printer for production.
The Results
With Ken Cook Co., John Deere now has multiple-language manuals available for their customers with no manual intervention. This enhancement also simplifies processes for John Deere administrators and reduces the quantity of part numbers that have to be entered.
John Deere remarks, “Ken Cook Co. always provides amazing customer support. They have helped our publishing system evolve over the years to incorporate new publication types, they’ve stepped up to challenges such as our request to create a multi-language manual publishing process, and they’ve responded to requests to create reporting functions within the system that can help us manage all of our in-process publications. These are just a few examples of projects they have done for us over the years to help our business run more smoothly.”
