Krone forage wagons and mowers obtain AEF ISOBUS certification

Spelle, March 2013 – Krone has become the first agricultural equipment manufacturer to submit itself to the new ISOBUS tests conducted by the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF). The purpose of the AEF Conformance Test is to ascertain whether all the ISOBUS specifications and quality indicators have been met. Krone entered all of its forage wagons for the first round of tests and was successful in securing AEF ISOBUS certification for the AX, MX and ZX series. The same applies to the new EasyCut B 1000 CV and EasyCut B 1000 CV Collect butterfly mowers which passed the AEF test with flying colours.

The following aspects were scrutinised: user interface (VT), steering/control using an external joystick (AUX), machine data collection and management (TC-bas, TC-geo), plus compatibility with the Tractor ECU (TECU). AEF Conformance Tests are performed worldwide by four ISOBUS laboratories. These include DLG and NTTL in the USA, RELAB in Italy and the Competence Center ISOBUS (CCI) at Osnabrück in Germany, where the first Krone test was performed.

“The standardisation and evolution of agricultural applications and interfaces such as ISOBUS and of farm management systems is currently one of the major challenges in agricultural technology,” said Jan Horstmann, Head of Electronics and Product IT at Krone. “This is a goal that we at Krone have been systematically pursuing for many years now, because farmers and contractors do not want stand-alone solutions; they require open interfaces for networked processes.” About AEF: Seven international manufacturers of agricultural equipment and two professional associations came together to establish the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation on 28th October 2008. The initiative is an independent international organisation which currently numbers 150 companies, associations and organisations among its members. AEF is a user platform which makes resources and expertise available to promote the use of electronics in agriculture. The AEF database is the central repository of ISOBUS information. The first version has been available online since January 2013. Over the next few months, manufacturers of agricultural equipment, terminals and accessory devices will be progressively submitting their ISOBUS products to the AEF Conformance Test under lab conditions and entering the results in the AEF database.