John Deere Reman went big on Reman Day, with internal education of 66,000 employees within the world-wide John Deere organization.
Reman Day banners flew at 50 John Deere facilities worldwide.
Public events were held at John Deere Reman, JDR, in Springfield, Missouri, at JDR’s core management facility in nearby Strafford, and in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. JDR co-hosted a large public event with SRC Holdings Corporation, SRC, and Case New Holland Industrial Remanufacturing, CNHR, at SRC Electrical,LLC.
The internal John Deere events were spearheaded by a two minute video presentation with John Deere CEO and Chairman Sam Allen, talking about the importance of remanufacturing. This was followed up with a webinar about JohnDeere Reman, the history, the products and how they benefit the customers and employees.
“At 20 years, we are relatively new within John Deere, and our number one goal forReman Day was to create a message for our employees and educate them on remanufacturing,” said Sutton Berry, JDR Product Program Manager.
“From that perspective, we hit a home run. Anytime you can get your chairman and CEO to do a two minute video specifically on remanufacturing and the benefits to the organization, and show it company-wide – that’s pretty big.”
The feedback, according to Berry ranged from “Wow, I didn’t know that remanufacturing was that big a part of our business,” to “We need to think more strategically from a higher level about how we plan and design for reman.”
As part of the celebration, JDR Reman Product Engineering Manager Chris Coburn and Senior Product Engineer Alkhalil Kabbod went to the product engineering center at John Deere head-quarters and held sessions for 220 attendees, educating the engineering community in the design center about remanufacturing and some of the challenges and benefits.
Events geared toward external audiences included tours of reman facilities for about 100 visitors, primarily from colleges, high schools and others related to workforce development in addition to the public events at SRC.
A two minute animated video on JohnDeere Reman, produced for the occasion, was released on the John Deere facebook page and circulated on social media. Within a week, it had 16,500 views on it.
Finally, the John Deere Reman team brought in pizza for all employees at every reman facility. Added Berry: “It wasn’t just a banner on the wall saying it was Reman Day. We celebrated with a lunch for all of our employees.”
“Very preliminary ideas for Reman Day 2019,” Berry told Reman World, “include bringing in suppliers and educating them on the importance of reman, why we are here, what we need and the challenges we face. This could be done in all areas from supply management and factory engineering to accounting.”
The following is an excerpt from the Deere CEO and Chairman’s Reman Day message to Deere employees world-wide: “Let me give you an example of why reman is good for everyone – good for our customers . . . good for our dealers . . . good for the environment . . . and good for John Deere. For our customers, downtime means they’re losing money. Let’s say a farmer has an older model John Deere tractor and needs to replace the engine. And we no longer make that engine. Reman is good for that farmer because he can get a replacement engine that’s as good as or even better than a new one. Reman is good for our dealer, who can get that customer up and running, often in less time than it takes for an overhaul. Reman is good for the environment because we use less raw materials and energy than we do to make a brand new engine. And reman is good for John Deere because we’re helping all of the above – our customer, our dealer, and the environment.”
This excerpt was taken from the June 2018 Reman World magazine.