The AEF North American Plugfest was held in downtown Milwaukee, Wis., April 1-3, in conjunction with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM). After 3 years of the event being held alongside Commodity Classic, AEM and AEF decided to move the 3-day event to Milwaukee. 

A variety of technical teams from across the agricultural industry connected their competing devices to help ensure that all brands work together seamlessly. This makes the equipment more effective and facilitates the work of farmers.

In addition, various project teams held face-to-face meetings during the week and presented current and future activities. In particular, the Task Controllers team discussed the current standardization work in ISO for the conformance test for the next generation of task controllers. Special attention was paid to the newly developed INFO functionality. Some companies had prepared the new use case for Plugfest tests. Everyone was excited about this new function, which was officially visible for the first time. INFO shows the current status of AEF functionalities on a machine in practice and not just as a status in the AEF ISOBUS database.

AEM also held several committee meetings alongside the Plugfest. These groups included AEM’s Ag Technology Leadership Group, CE Technology Leadership Group, Autonomous Machines Coordinating Committee, and the Cybersecurity Committee. This was a unique opportunity to create interindustry alignment with AEF while providing exposure to the great work to our CE counterparts on the fantastic work that the agricultural industry is doing to address interoperability.