CLAAS is manufacturer of agricultural ma- chinery with worldwide operations and headquarters in the East Westphalian town of Harsewinkel near Gütersloh. Throughout its history, which dates all the way back to 1913, CLAAS has repeatedly introduced groundbreaking innovations to the interna- tional agricultural community, which have turned into long-lived product types with a dominant design. CLAAS stands for efficient agriculture around the globe, including Af- rica, where the company has been active for several decades. Hundreds of tractors and combine harvesters can be found across Su- dan, for instance. Durability and robustness are more important to Sudanese customers than high-tech – but CLAAS offers both. The Dominator combine harvester – the epitome of a solid harvester in the eyes of African farmers – was introduced in the 1970s. This association is so strong that “Dominator” has even become synonymous with combine har- vesters in some African languages.
Innovation has been in the DNA of the com- pany founded by entrepreneur and machine fitter August Claas since its inception. On the eve of the beginning of World War I, Class made the bold move of starting his own busi- ness producing and repairing mechanical hay balers. Even his father had already been intrigued by this type of machine adopted from the UK and developed it further. Con- tinuous development led to the first patent for a knotter with a movable upper lip in 1923. Straw binders and straw balers are the main drivers for the company's growth. To- day's balers produce round or square hay bales weighing up to 400 kg/piece as well as silage bales weighing more than one tonne each. Before the bale is placed on the field, it is bound and wrapped with six layers of stretch film in a single step once it has been pressed. This process takes just 35 seconds.
Another milestone was the development of a combine harvester adapted to European har- vest conditions. The product was launched in 1936. CLAAS had introduced its first fully functional European combine harvester to an awestruck public. After the war, CLAAS be- came an international combine harvester ex- pert. The 100,000th combine harvester, a CLAAS MATADOR, was presented in 1962. But in this year alone, CLAAS manufactured 20,000 harvesters, making the company the leading manufacturer in Europe. The largest combine harvester model currently on the market has a maximum output of nearly 600 hp and reaches a top speed of 40 km/h. The cutterbars are up to 13.5 m wide. The grain tank holds 12,500 litres. With this harvester, 675 tonnes of wheat can be harvested across a surface of approximately 70 hectares in eight hours.
CLAAS is also adaptive to developments in the agricultural sector. In 1973, the company responded to the increasing trend of corn cul- tivation with a self-propelled harvester for the crop, the Jaguar forage harvester, and quickly became the global market leader in this segment.
To round off its product range, CLAAS de- cided to launch its own high-horsepower tractor, the XERION, in 1997. But modern tractors are more than just traction engines: they are agricultural system vehicles. In 2003, CLAAS acquired 51% of the shares of French tractor manufacturer Renault Agri- culture, which enabled the company to offer a complete range of tractors.
Since 1994, CLAAS has been promoting dig- itization in agriculture, initially with the elec- tronic, satellite-based AGROCOM infor- mation system. The development and inte- gration of software and systems is now bun- dled in the E-Systems department at CLAAS. In order to optimize the efficiency and sus- tainability of the complex process chains in the agricultural sector, the installed services of the available equipment must be retrieva- ble in a targeted manner and logistics func- tions must be available without delay. The tasks of controlling, measuring, document- ing and managing require networked sys- tems and integrated processes.
In the past, the classic response to the quest for high yields were larger machines. But the natural environment provides limits for 21st century agricultural engineering and agricul- ture. There is hardly any scope for today's machines to grow further in terms of size, width and height. It is therefore becoming in- creasingly important to introduce produc- tion-related know-how into the process chains in such a way that efficiency can be in- creased further. Software and sensors al- ready account for 30 percent of the value added in agricultural engineering. In the au- tomotive industry, this proportion is still much lower at an average of 10 percent. Ag- riculture is one of the most digitized indus- tries.
The challenge: digitization and precision farming
Agricultural engineering is one of the world's most important future industries. Without state-of-the-art technology, today's agricul- tural sector would be able to feed no more than 1.5 billion people using the arable land available. 7.3 billion people, about 83 million more than last year, currently live on Earth. Most forecasts predict that, by 2050, the planet will be inhabited approximately 9 bil- lion people. The implications for food pro- duction are significant. Across about 52 mil- lion km2 of land, we currently harvest some 2 billion tonnes of cereals and produce ap- proximately 320 million tonnes of meat. By 2050, our demand is expected to increase to over 3 billion tonnes of cereals and 470 tonnes of meat. At the same time, however, the agricultural space available will decrease to 50 million km2.
One of the main answers to this challenge is “smart farming”. But the consistent use of digital intelligence in agriculture does not only pay off in terms of yield. It also im- proves the quality and sustainability of our foodstuffs. The digital optimization of pro- cess chains helps to reduce the use of ferti- lizer on the fields, the output quantity of pes- ticides and the use of medicines in livestock breeding. As a result of these effects, smart farming is not just a megatrend in conven- tional agriculture but also in organic farming as it reduces the cost of production.
If, for example, the combine harvester measures the amount of grain harvested persquare metre every two seconds, these data allow direct conclusions on the topology of the field. The yield map created in this way indicates the exact distribution of fertile soil. Such data can be used for a more targeted ap- plication of seeds and fertilizers, thus avoid- ing over and underdosing. Soil cultivation can be performed in accordance with the ex- act nutrient content and yield along different field topologies instead. The current crop sta- tus can be determined via satellite images, which can be combined with weather data to issue advance warnings of pest infestation, including on smartphones or tablets. This permits savings of up to 95% of pesticides used.
Fully automated GPS-supported steering systems, e.g. in the case of tractors, ensure optimized towing vehicle operation. Turns on headlands are performed automatically in such a way that they permit a highly precise next run. The accurate tracking performance due to the GPS system leads to savings on diesel, machine hours, working time and op- erating materials of up to five percent.
The CLAAS family business has more than 11,500 employees, generated a turnover of more than EUR 3.8 billion in 2015 (up from EUR 2.5 billion in 2010) and holds more than 3,000 patents worldwide. Its export activities account for about 77%. The company posted a 2014 pre-tax profit of nearly EUR 330 mil- lion. Throughout its corporate history, CLAAS has repeatedly demonstrated that global breakthroughs can be achieved if the right ideas are combined with perseverance and an appetite for risk. Having already re- acted to the industry's dynamic challenges, the company decided to review and adapt its IP management to these situations in 2009.
IP strategy and positioning
CLAAS is a technology leader and often a first mover in introducing new technologies. The fundamental question the company had to ask itself in 2008/09 was how its patent portfolio was positioned compared to its business and technology segments, the com- petition and technology trends. The aim of this analysis was to optimize resource man- agement and identify opportunities and risks arising from the company's patent position. A successfully reached position of exclusiv- ity should also lead to tangible economic re- sults if designed into the patent portfolio as a forward-looking scenario to optimize its value contribution.
Portfolio analysis is an analytical tool that methodologically supports investment deci- sions in intellectual property as well as stra- tegic considerations for the use and competi- tive implementation of prohibition rights. The portfolio methodology was developed in the 1970s and is the most widely used tool for linking business analyses with analyses of the corporate environment (e.g. the competi- tive situation). Portfolio analysis enables a holistic view of a company's activities and their alignment with corporate goals. Portfo- lio analysis is often performed in two steps. The first step is to define which critical ob- jects for success are to be analyzed. Such crit- ical objects for success arise from sustainable performance and success potentials for the company's future development. In the case of patent portfolio analysis, these are patent stocks which ultimately lead to positions of exclusivity. The selection of the holdings to be analyzed, their comparability, their signif- icance with respect to the initial questions and the level of detail applied in order to sub- sequently achieve high-quality evaluation and interpretation results is crucial in this re- spect.
Throughout the observation period, CLAAS has heavily invested in R&D and IP. The number of annual patent registrations has al- most quintupled during this period. Signifi- cant differences between competitors can be detected in terms of resource distribution in R&D and therefore in terms of patent appli- cation behaviour. Figure 3 shows the patent applicants in descending order of application intensity along the x-axis; Deere has there- fore the highest relative application intensity. Put simply, the following assumption can be deduced from the diagram: the greater the application intensity, the weaker the focus on agricultural technology.