Workforce Wednesday: Meet a Design Engineer

Developing and enhancing equipment that meets customers' needs is a primary concern for Design Engineers. 

Josh Graeve, an Engineering Manager, has worked at John Deere for more than 20 years. He oversees mowing and cutting products in the Hay and Forage Division.  His favorite part of the job is being able to connect with the customers and help find solutions to their ever-changing needs. 

“A lot of times you can just see that person light up and get excited when they see the solution to their problem, and I think that's the most rewarding part about what we do in design engineering,” Graeve said. 

Sometimes, he gets out into the field and can ride with his customers on their tractors, which he enjoys, he said. 

Day-to-day, Graeve said he and his team work together to identify needs or problems, brainstorm solutions, work with the manufacturing team to ensure the solutions are doable, and then test the solutions once they’ve been created. Any given day it could be one or a combination of those tasks as many projects are happening at the same time, Graeve said. 

There are two sides to design engineering: making products that already exist better and developing entirely new products. Both aspects are necessary in ensuring that customers’ needs are met, while remaining competitive in the industry, Graeve said.  

“I think that's one thing that really challenges me is making sure we're always pushing to improve our product from a performance durability standpoint so that we continue to provide the best agriculture equipment on the market,” Graeve said. 

Technology drives the agricultural industry in many aspects, and engineering is no different.  

 “If you think about the history of John Deere- back to the steel plow- there were a lot of really simple pieces of equipment early on,” Graeve said. “If you look today at our equipment, we have very high-tech monitors, we have MTG's that are sharing data with the cloud and sharing data between our machine so that our customers can see that data both their other computer on their cell phone it is giving them insights to their operation.” 

MTGs are mobile telematics gateways that transmit data from the field directly back to an operation center account. John Deere’s MTG platform is called JD Link, and it allows for remote support directly to the grower from the dealer. John Deere is also able to provide growers with auto track enabled equipment, which helps them steer through fields, Graeve said.  

Graeve said the technologies utilized will only continue to develop. 

“I think we're going to see more and more solutions where machines connect together and talk to each other and make the operation for the farmer more efficient where we will share insights to their operation to them so that they can understand what they're doing in the field, how it affects their crop, how it affects their output and how they can improve that to make themselves more efficient and more profitable,” he said.  

Graeve’s team of design engineers will play a role in designing equipment that can work cohesively. 

Engineering has provided an avenue for Graeve’s to develop new products, but it has also awarded him opportunities to travel the world. 

Graeve, who was raised in a small town in Iowa, said he had never been beyond a state that bordered Iowa before working as an engineer. 

“I've been all over the world,” he said. “I've met people across the across the globe. I've gotten to see farming practices and different countries and see how they compare, and it's just it's been a really neat experience that way to kind of understand how things change globally, meet people and build relationships with people all around the world.” 

His tenure at John Deere has helped prepare him for where he is today, but to get started, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State University. He has also participated in various courses and earned a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering while employed.  

Graeve encourages those interested in pursuing Design Engineering as a career path to take as many math and science courses as possible.  

“All those stem type classes are really great,” he said. “You can’t take enough of those.” 

He also encourages them to participate in STEM-related activities and find an engineer who can serve as a mentor. 

“I'm sure they'd be glad to talk to you about what they do and share a little bit about their jobs,” he said. 

What is something that you wish you had known on your first day:

I think one of the things is just being able to know the importance of being able to collaborate and network with people within the building and within the organization. I think engineers have a tendency, especially when they come out of school, to maybe be a little introverted and want to just sit at their area and design parts and solutions, but it's really critical to having good solutions to be able to integrate with our marketing team and understand the customer really well, and to be able to integrate with our manufacturing group and understand how the parts that we design are made and how we can make them easier for the manufacturing group to provide a quality part. So, it's really that collaboration piece and reaching out to others and building that network to discuss new designs.