MARKING the culmination of four years of planning and construction – the largest in the company’s history – SDF, the business behind Deutz-Fahr tractors, has opened new facilities at its site in Lauingen, southern Germany.
The plant includes a completely new tractor manufacturing complex on a greenfield site.
Part of a €34m (£29.3m) investment, the new factory has been designed to take over the primary tasks of tractor assembly from the firm’s long-established buildings on the same site. They have now been given over to cab production.
Lauingen has been home to agricultural machinery manufacturing since 1870, became a Deutz facility in 1969, and until 1996 was home to Deutz-Fahr combine production.
It has now been the primary Deutz-Fahr tractor-making site for 21 years, with
SDF now using it to produce four and six-cylinder tractors of 130hp and above. It will also be used to manufacture equivalent Same, Lamborghini and Hurlimann models.
However, Deutz-Fahr is the ‘home’ brand as well as the group’s biggest, representing 63% of SDF revenues. For this reason, the site is regarded as a Deutz-Fahr facility and the vast majority of its production will be of 6, 7 and the new 9 series, Agrotron tractors. By 2018, it will also be producing the planned 11 series Agrotron models of up to 440hp.
The facility is supplied by a components warehouse comprising 4000 storage areas for large parts and a small parts facility with 25,000 locations, which is served by a reactive automatic handling arrangement.
Based on a single conventional powered production line design that carries machines slowly along as they are assembled, the main build area also includes innovative powered walkways for staff.
Components are delivered at the moment they are required on the line, and staff walkways move in parallel to the tractor line at the same speed, making component installation easier and faster.
Completed powertrains are then passed to the next stage of manufacturing by overhead cranes.
In addition to individual quality checks at each installation step, further tests take place at the end of powertrain production, with up to three powertrains tested simultaneously for functioning and tightness at a hydraulic operating pressure of 220 bar. Once complete, the tractors move to the paint shop and to final assembly.

* Average build time per tractor is 16 hours, with a new machine leaving the line every 12 minutes.
* Production capacity is claimed to be 30-35 units/day, or four tractors/hour, depending on model.
* It can produce an annual figure of 5000-6000 units, depending on model.
* The factory produces three Deutz-Fahr ranges, but it is planned to increase this.
* Smaller Deutz-Fahr and other SDF group tractors for northern Europe are mostly built at in Treviglio, Italy.
Representing expenditure of €20m, the largest individual investment within the factory has been the paint facility, where the powertrains move through a mostly automated painting process.
There, the powertrains are cleaned by robots to remove oil, grease and contaminants and to shorten the first drying process before priming, cavities and recesses are blown out with air nozzles, after which primer is applied manually before the subsequent top coat is sprayed on by robots.
SDF claimed this guaranteed that all powertrains pass a salt water spray test of 720 hours without signs of corrosion. As a comparison, car sector manufacturers usually measure corrosion using a 240-hour test.


Training facility
SDF has also constructed a new training, museum and ‘brand experience' facility for Deutz-Fahr, sited adjacent to the new factory.
The two-storey Deutz-Fahr Arena houses an exhibition hall for current products, the Deutz-Fahr Museum – which includes classic Deutz and Deutz-Fahr tractors and combines – plus a cinema, merchandise shop, cafeteria and conference and training rooms. Outside is a test track for visitors.
The firm said it expected to host up to 3000 dealer and importer staff annually for training, with around 10,000 customer visitors.