As farm equipment becomes increasingly complex, dealership technicians need access to a large library of repair procedure information to ensure they are able to service all machines.
However, there are a lot of machines out there, and finding that information can take time.
Danielle Waterworth, vice-president of global ag service and maintenance development at CNH, says speeding up that process and improving efficiency at dealership service departments was a key objective when she assumed her current role at the parent company of Case IH and New Holland.
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“The perspective I got immediately was on any given day, we have to be able to respond to a technical support issue, but sometimes on those machines, we have to do a lot of research to find the proper way to support that machine. That research is time (technicians) are not applying anything to the machine, but they’re trying to figure out, ‘what do I have to do?’
“One of my first tasks was how do I reduce that time. I have to speed up giving them the answer. That’s where AI was really starting to come in.”
The result was the creation of CNH’s AI Tech Assistant.
The system uses artificial intelligence to help a technician get quick access to the correct service bulletins and pull out the relevant repair procedures.
“We started talking about this as an idea back in 2022,” she adds.
“In December of 2023, we kicked it off with our first pilot dealer as a concept with three products. We grew and added more products. 2024 was really about building that into a tool.”
Last September, CNH began rolling out AI Tech Assistant to North American dealers.
“AI Tech Assistant is something we’ve been looking and asking for,” says Brad Meyer, director of service operations at Titan Machinery.
The American company was one of the initial dealerships to participate in the AI Tech Assistant’s initial pilot project. The system will be expanded to New Zealand and Australia soon.
“It gives us the ability to find stuff faster,” he adds.
“And, especially, it’s available 24 hours a day. A lot of times, the harder questions could come in after hours, during the weekend or holidays.”
Those are times technicians may have to work through a repair on their own without the benefit of advice from other experienced mechanics nearby.
Other dealership staff are finding it saves them time as well.
“We’re also seeing the service manager use that tool to start the work order,” adds Meyer.
“Now we use that tool to research a repair and have a better idea of what we’re going to encounter.
“Our service managers are averaging about an hour a day with customer phone calls and questions. So if it can save him 15 minutes a day by getting quick answers, that’s going to be good. The tool has been advantageous for the parts department, looking up service information, our sales team and precision farming specialists.”
Added Waterworth: “I believe it’s 1.5 million pieces of material we’ve ingested into our Tech Assistant in regard to all of the products covered in our technical library.”
However, there are plans to expand its range beyond just repair procedures.
“We believe this could be the front end of a single digital dealer experience,” she says.
“What is it you’d like to do based on that (machine) serial number? Instead of having disparate tools open at the same time, have a singular experience.
“It explains to a tech how to make the repair, he asks for the part number, It gives that back through AI Tech Assistant and says, ‘would you like me to order that part because I see it’s not in your inventory?’ That’s the experience we want.”
Meyer agrees integrating parts data would significantly broaden AI Tech Assistant’s usefulness for dealers.
“To continue to broaden the range,” he says.
“It’s giving us a lot of technical information. We want to cross that over to parts, integrating it into telematics. All those things reduce response time.”
Waterworth notes the ability to provide dealers with this kind of resource would have been impossible just a few years ago. The advancement of AI has allowed brands to reevaluate how they support their dealers.
“AI has been something in the last five years, and that’s the thing about AI, it’s going to continue to improve. We don’t know where this is going to take us. Our CNH IT department is learning along the way as well, to give us the best opportunity to make this the best product for our dealers.”
