Bad Neustadt, Germany The agricultural machine manufacturer CLAAS honored Preh GmbH as its supplier of the year 2010 in the “Innovation” category. The award was presented at CLAAS’ 7th Supplier Day on January 20 at the Harsewinkel Technology Park.
Head of CLAAS Corporate Purchasing Rüdiger Mohr and CLAAS tractor (CT) Purchasing Director Christophe Perge, presented the award to Christoph Hummel, Preh director of sales, marketing and project management, and to Martin Schäfer, key account manager for commercial vehicles and sensors. In his presentation address, Perge explained: “The product solution developed with Preh led to a real win-win situation. The milestones in the ambitious project schedule were all met along the way. Our innovative cooperation produced a solution that can be used throughout the entire CLAAS group. At the same time, we kept our focus on improved ergonomics to ensure that users would have optimal operating conditions.
In addition to developing and manufacturing instrument clusters, Preh played a key role in the implementation of an innovative control system for cockpits on CLAAS agricultural machinery. This was a multifunction control whose ergonomic design was fully adapted to the needs of the users. Preh is one of the world’s leading suppliers of automotive vehicle interior control systems. This specialized know-how was brought to bear in the development work for CLAAS.
“We were able to engineer-in the ergonomic characteristics of the multifunction control lever required by CLAAS. The result was a control system that can be used on a wide range of tractors and harvesters regardless of the platform being used,” explained Preh Director Christoph Hummel. Key account manager Martin Schäfer was visibly proud: “Working together with CLAAS engineers, our engineers really demonstrated their innovative strengths. I am very pleased today that our cooperation has received this huge accolade.”