Establishing a digitalization partnership to compete for international market leadership

The power of technology

Technology has always been a key to success for the Crucianelli Group (Crucianelli) as it has achieved various precedents, including being the first agricultural machinery company in Latin America to use robotics in welding production processes, which in the 1990s was unthinkable in Argentina. The first computer-aided design (CAD) systems quickly followed.

“Like sustainability and social-economic stability for our farmers, technology is something that we have been bringing with us from the beginning,” states Gustavo Crucianelli, chief executive officer (CEO).

This was the case in 2018 when he began to understand the company had too many tools with too many functionalities to address the emerging world of holistic product lifecycle management (PLM).

“We began to see that our way of designing a product, maintaining that design, and the lifecycle of that product had reached a ceiling,” says Crucianelli. “It was time to make the leap.”

The company turned to Siemens Digital Industries Software, with the help of X-Plan and Descar Argentina, two Siemens Smart Expert Partners that had previously worked with Crucianelli.

“We knew the Siemens partners for a long time and the projects we worked on together always worked out well,” says Crucianelli. “I think that was fundamental. They both understood what we needed to adapt and how to do it. And of course, the Siemens Xcelerator products are first class.”

Crucianelli adopts Siemens Xcelerator

Today, excelling at digitalization is essential for Crucianelli. The company has its own onsite data center and with the help of Descar Argentina is implementing a complete digital backbone using SAP and Teamcenter® software to cover the Crucianelli customer experience from point of sales, design and production to after-sales service.

Crucianelli uses Teamcenter to enhance collaboration, providing centralized access to documents, tasks and designs, improving communication across teams. This collaborative environment streamlines validation across departments, speeding time-to-market. With Teamcenter, Crucianelli is reaffirming its commitment to innovation and being a leader in the agricultural industry of the future.

As part of putting their entire organization and their 70-strong dealer network on the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services, Crucianelli implemented Designcenter™ NX™ software for CAD, which is part of the Designcenter software suite, and Simcenter™ software engineering simulation tools. The Crucianelli engineering, research and development (R&D) and product development teams adopted Siemens Xcelerator with the help of X-Plan. With the help of Descar Argentina, the company is also extending Siemens Xcelerator to digital factory applications, including a complete digital factory line using Plant Simulation in the Tecnomatix® portfolio for the new Dómina production, planned for 2026 in Armstrong, Argentina.

“From product concept to the end of that product’s lifecycle, everything is within this Siemens platform,” states Crucianelli.” All the simulation software and everything related to the production side is integrated. That’s the Siemens advantage: We have a very high level of integration throughout all product cycles.”

Simcenter, Designcenter NX, Teamcenter and Tecnomatix are part of Siemens Xcelerator.

Digitalization is the starting point

The days of fixing farming implements in a shed in rural Armstrong are long gone, but Crucianelli still feels that their farming family deserves the best agricultural machinery possible.

“The Argentinian farmer is the one who got us where we are today,” explains Crucianelli. “Argentina has the most direct use of no-till agriculture in the world and some very demanding natural conditions. Our agricultural community in the Argentinian countryside is the largest contributor to the gross domestic product. It must be the most efficient sector and must adapt to change; it can’t slow down or stall. Our farmers must plant with the best-possible conditions to achieve high productivity on a large scale.”

With family farms running up to 200 hectares and larger and corporate farms hitting the 20,000-hectare mark, Crucianelli seeders and planters are well suited for the large and flat fields of Argentina.

“Many of our products are perfectly designed for the no-till machine market,” explains Crucianelli. “Add in the durability requirements and workload demand from the Argentinian farmer and that makes a Crucianelli product that is competitive on a global scale. We are more than ready to go out into the world, to Brazil, Bulgaria, to other parts of Eastern Europe.”

Optimizing every hectare

Driven by the exacting standards of the Argentinian farming ecosystem, the company has traditionally counted on technological advancement, agility and continuous process improvement to make the best possible agricultural tools, like the Plantor and the recently released Dómina. Most Crucianelli products can be tailored to specific farming techniques, soil and crop types and terrains and climate conditions.

The drive to no-till excellence

A complex product to begin with, the customizable aspect adds another level of complexity to the design and production puzzle. Crucianelli agricultural machinery needs to be more than a workhorse – it needs to be a thoroughbred.

Take the Plantor, one of the Crucianelli flagship products. It is a large autonomy, high productivity seed drill, with three polyethylene hoppers with a capacity of 2,400 liters each, and a working width between 12.6 and 18.9 meters (m). Thanks to the Crucianelli front-vertical automatic folding system, it can be reduced to 3.9 m for easy transport.

The new Dómina, which was completely designed in Simcenter 3D, looks to be even better with a 3.2-m width for transportation, a versatile 8.5-, 9.5- or 10.5-m full-out working width and, most importantly, specifically engineered features to maximize sowing and fertilization quality. Using Dómina will enable the farmer to be able to optimize every acre.

Engineering down to seed placement

Engineering to optimize yield-per-hectare performance put pressure on the young native engineers at Crucianelli to innovate down to the minor details like seed placement and seed and soil characteristics. This requires complex simulation, including particle transportation, flow and fluid dynamics and mechanical and structural performance
studies of the smallest details.

Digital seeds provide feats of engineering

Juan Pablo Cittadini, engineering manager for Crucianelli, and his young team of engineers were tasked with making this work.

“Agriculture is a sector where technology is making a significant impact right now,” says Cittadini. “It’s essential to accelerate development cycles and launch new products and processes faster than ever before. Our customers want more efficient products to take advantage of reduced planting time windows and improve crop yields, and maintenance-free products that minimize downtime. Plus, as the company is growing, we have more international regulations to consider. As engineers, we need to be proactive regarding every new product decision.”

This is why he and his team turned to Simcenter and its advanced engineering capabilities to answer these challenges.

“We know our results with Simcenter are reliable and this makes the decision-making process easier,” says Cittadini. “We have confidence in our analysis and therefore there are fewer iterations.

“Siemens technology provides best-in-class solutions for our challenges and for our needs. Our product development team has worked closely with the team from X-Plan, the Siemens partner, to get used to the new technology and capitalize on their engineering abilities quickly.”

The team has already looked at the results of their Siemens Xcelerator tools and the data looks promising.

“Previously, it took 48 months to go from the first stage of product development to a validated prototype,” says Cittadini. “Now it’s 18 to 24 months, cutting that vital process by over 50 percent.”

Slashing product development time by 40 percent

“What we mainly saw on the product development side most quickly was improved development times,” says Crucianelli. “Thanks to the experience we gained from the Siemens projects, the time required to develop a new product and the number of prototypes and field tests were reduced by more than 40 percent.”

Enter the digital factory

On the factory side of things, Descar Argentina and the Crucianelli team are working on optimizing the new production line for Dómina and prepping the factory line for additional robotic automation using a digital factory model developed in Plant Simulation with the latest Designcenter NX CAM solutions.

A family company to the core

With all these new projects ahead, Crucianelli is certain that not only did he find the right tools and partners in the Siemens software and expert community, but he also found the right path to success for future farmers using Crucianelli agricultural machinery to feed the world.

“We have a strategic plan to be among the top five seeder companies worldwide by 2030,” he says. “The success of our digitalization partnership with Siemens is crucial to that goal and this includes the Siemens partners, X-Plan and Descar Argentina. Everyone on the team knows that we want to continue to be a family business yet one that is professional on our own terms. We had the best experience implementing Siemens Xcelerator. We’re very happy not only with the Siemens products, but with the entire team and process.”