Businessweek

Deere & Company manufactures construction equipment and forestry equipment worldwide. Segments The company’s operations are categorized into three segments: Agriculture and Turf, Construction and Forestry, and Financial Services. AGRICULTURE AND TURF The Agriculture and Turf segment manufactures and distributes a full line of agricultural and turf equipment and related service parts. The segment’s equipment operations are consolidated into five product platforms — crop harvesting (combines, corn pickers, cotton and sugarcane harvesters and related front-end equipment and sugarcane loaders); turf and utility (utility vehicles, riding lawn equipment, walk-behind mowers, commercial mowing equipment, golf course equipment, implements for mowing, tilling, snow and debris handling, aerating and many other residential, commercial, golf and sports turf care applications; and other outdoor power products); hay and forage (self-propelled forage harvesters and attachments, balers and mowers); crop care (tillage, seeding and application equipment, including sprayers, nutrient management and soil preparation machinery); and tractors (loaders and large, medium and utility tractors and related attachments). The company also purchases certain products from other manufacturers for resale. Additionally, the segment offers ancillary products and services supporting its agricultural and turf equipment customers. John Deere Landscapes, a unit of the segment, distributes irrigation equipment, nursery products and landscape supplies, including seed, fertilizer and hardscape materials, primarily to landscape service professionals. John Deere Water, also a unit of the agriculture and turf segment, manufactures and distributes precision agricultural irrigation equipment and supplies. The segment also provides integrated agricultural business and equipment management systems. John Deere’s advanced telematics systems remotely connect agricultural equipment owners, business managers and dealers to agricultural equipment in the field, providing real-time alerts and information about equipment location, utilization, performance and maintenance to improve productivity and efficiency. In addition to the John Deere brand, the Agriculture and Turf segment purchases and sells various equipment attachments under the Frontier, Kemper and Green Systems brand names, and manufactures and sells walk-behind mowers and scarifiers in select European countries under the SABO brand name. The company manufactures its agricultural and turf equipment for sale primarily through independent retail dealer networks, and also builds products for sale by mass retailers, including The Home Depot and Lowe’s. The company offers harvesting solutions to support the development of mechanized harvesting of grain, oilseeds, cotton, sugar and biomass. Seasonality: New combine and cotton harvesting equipment has been sold under early order programs with waivers of retail finance charges available to customers who take delivery of machines during off-season periods. To increase asset turnover and reduce the average level of field inventories through the year, production and shipment schedules of these product lines would normally be proportionately higher in the second and third quarters of each year. CONSTRUCTION AND FORESTRY John Deere construction, earthmoving, material handling and forestry equipment includes a range of backhoe loaders, crawler dozers and loaders, four-wheel-drive loaders, excavators, motor graders, articulated dump trucks, landscape loaders, skid-steer loaders, log skidders, log feller bunchers, log loaders, log forwarders, log harvesters and various attachments. The segment’s forestry machines are distributed under the John Deere brand name and forestry attachments are distributed under the John Deere and Waratah brand names. Pursuant to agreements between the company and Bell Equipment Limited (Bell), Bell licenses the company to manufacture articulated dump trucks in the U.S. for its distribution under the John Deere brand name in North, Central and South America. The company licenses Bell to manufacture and sell certain John Deere