Precision Data Solves Efficiency and Retention Issues
With rising labour costs and shortages, it has become essential to maximise labour efficiency and retain high performing staff. Growers with a comprehensive and analytical approach are seeing improved staff happiness, employee productivity and higher profit margins. Anecdotal evidence on staff performance by managers doesn’t provide the full picture, with many gaps and scope for human bias. With the latest technology, it is now easier and more affordable than ever before to obtain comprehensive data to help to mitigate labour issues.

This data gives new insights into staff behaviour and habits, allowing staff to be recognised, re-warded and have their potential maximised. It also allows managers to effectively recruit and benchmark against a known profile of high performing employees and to compare across differ-ent sites. Staff can be directed to focus on the jobs that they are best at. Overall, staff are hap-pier and are more likely to stay in their job, because they are accomplishing well defined, recog-nised goals and are able to finish work earlier to spend more time with family and friends.

Obtaining quality and detailed data used to be a time consuming, error prone and expensive un-dertaking. This involved either paper based recording systems, or expensive one size fits all vendor hardware. BumperCrop has taken a mobile-first approach so it is now affordable and easy. Widely available mobile devices are paired with WorkWave scanning tags to make data collection easy and highly reliable in any greenhouse setting. Operations can choose the level of data they want to collect, making rollout and change management easy. This also removes vendor lock-in, associated maintenance hassles and means the system automatically updates.

Growers can track their operations remotely from their PC, smart-phone or tablet or easily share data by harnessing BumperCrop’s open data platform. The platform has been built specifically for customisation, as operations often have differing processes and terminology to be catered to. For example, different reports are available such as time taken on rows, weight picked, or number of stems completed. Different varieties can also be seamlessly assigned and updated across rows.

BumperCrop’s Crop Management platform includes crop planning and yield management capa-bilities and it’s companion App is now available in 20 different languages, so that its benefits are being realised by growers across the world.

A new solution is saving scouting teams hours of data collection work each week, and is freeing up time to focus on achieving healthier crops. Introduced by BumperCrop, this system simplifies data collection and improves communication with a precisely designed interface, a scouting heatmap and incorporates the use of scannable tags. The system has been designed and tested over the past year in conjunction with one of New Zealand’s leading greenhouse producers, NZ Gourmet.

“Preparing concise and comprehensive reports is key to successful pest and disease control. By using this user-friendly App to record and identify problems on crops, we can save time and have better communication with management and other pest control technicians.” explains Hamzeh Ghasemi, Biocontrol Technician at Gourmet Waiuku.

Prior to using BumperCrop’s system, NZ Gourmet was recording scouting data using a custom designed Excel workbook on a tablet. By switching to a purpose-built solution whereby row tags are scanned, the steps to input data are able to be minimised, Gourmet Waiuku can now save an additional 2-3 hours a week of labour across 2 scouting staff. The time taken for data entry re-lating to one issue on a 85m capsicum row is now only 10-15 seconds. “Handling a compact mobile device is easier than a tablet and much better than using per and paper. I have tried all options during three years of work as a biocontrol technician and found this to be the best.” says Hamzeh.

Reports are automatic and are separated from data collection, which enables their format to be optimized for review and decision making. “Having neat and standardized reports helps to save time when compared to the old way.” continues Hamzeh.

Above: heatmap displaying severity level of Thrips for each row and pole

A heatmap overview of each greenhouse allows managers to see the status of pests and diseas-es in each row and pole and how these have changed over time. This results in better pest and disease control decision making and related outcomes. “Scouting reports now arrive automati-cally in my inbox and are in the precise format that I need to make accurate assessments and decisions” according to Roelf Schreuder, Director of Covered Crops for NZ Gourmet.

Time that is saved by improved data entry, reporting and expedited decision making can now be put towards achieving healthier crops. Crop scouting can be divided into the three steps of identification, marking, and recording data. ‘We prefer to invest more time on identification of problems on crops and less time on data collection. So, using a system with more time efficiency helps us to achieve a healthier crop.” concludes Hamzeh.

Growers Mitigate Labour Pressures with BumperCrop’s Efficiency System

Big Impact to Bottom Line Performance

Labour represents roughly one third of greenhouse growers ongoing costs, meaning that even a modest improvement can result in a big impact to bottom line performance. With rising labor costs and Covid-19 related labour pressures, it is more important than ever to run a highly effi-cient business that optimises staff productivity.

Smart Insights – Data that Makes the Difference

BumperCrop’s high-tech labour management focuses on the labour efficiency elements most important for individual operations with its powerful capabilities that allow for customisation, adaption to existing processes and integration with existing systems. By honing in on the key metrics that matter to individual operations, efficiency can be maximised. Some growers have reported labour efficiency gains of up to 20% and saving many hours of admin time per week.

“In addition to providing more efficiency, we wanted to provide a system that delivers a better outcome overall. Most labor management systems have big upfront costs that result in vendor lock-in, poor support and costly upgrade fees down the road. Instead, we offer an affordable subscription model so growers get value at all times, not just when they start out with the system,” said Managing Director Adam Forbes.

Fast to Deploy – Scales as You Need

Growers are busy and don’t have time for extensive meetings or to learn and configure compli-cated new systems. A trial of BumperCrop’s Labour Management System can be up and running in less than 20 minutes once hardware arrives. After this, it can easily be scaled up as required. This benefits both smaller growers with less staff and large growers who often prefer to start out with a part of their operation.

Improves Performance with Technology

A carefully thought out and thoroughly tested design minimizes the time it takes to input data. WorkWave’ tags allow staff to easily and accurately log work by waving a device over a tag at the end of each row and to input data. Growers view the results in near real time and staff become more motivated, as they are able see their performance on dashboards. Growers are than able to use this data to pay staff based on performance.

Less Time Spent Managing

Growers realise substantial operational savings by spending less time managing and following up with staff. With all tasks and time worked logged in the system, growers can see an overview of the operation and individual staff performances for any time period.

Plan More Effectively

Managers use picking data to more accurately anticipate yields before packing starts, helping to achieve better prices. They can also see an overview of problems identified by staff as they work, or understand how much was picked at the same time last season and which rows yielded the most.

A System that Keeps on Improving

BumperCrop’s team of technology and user experience experts has been working closely with greenhouse growers to perfect their system over the past 2 years. The entire system is cloud-based, which means that improvements, once tested and verified, automatically roll out to subscribers. A growing number of greenhouse operators are using the BumperCrop system as it becomes a trusted partner for small and large growers alike.