Reliability, capacity and our farm equipment effectiveness When I first came to farming 10 years ago from manufacturing environments where reliability and OEE are inherent measures and critical to good operational performance, I was astounded that this was not really considered at all. So what is this key metric? OEE stands for overall equipment effectiveness and it is essentially a measure of our equipment’s productivity - it measures the percentage of planned production time that is truly … [Read more...]
Cost Cost Cost
Cost Cost Cost With milk prices unpredictable, inflation and interest rates going up and up in this part of the world, and all input costs increasing constantly, managing cost within your farm business well is absolutely crucial. Any waste allowed in your business is just adding to more cost. We did a quick analysis of how much costs have increased over the the last season. While milk prices had increased by around 36% over the last couple of seasons (reduced again now to about a 20% … [Read more...]
The importance of a well organised workplace….. 5S it!
An example of a farm that is not Lean.... Check this photo out of a farm I drove past last year....... what is your impression of this farm business? Does your farm look like this? Last week I had the opportunity to run some workshops with sheep and beef farmers on the South Island and it reminded me of this photo. The Lean tool 5S is vital One of the lean tools we talked about last week is 5S - basically creating a well organised, clean, safe workplace where everything … [Read more...]
Streamlining our calf feeding process to reduce time and motion
We are almost at the end of calving now (yes was suppose to post this a while back!) but this season we made some big changes in our journey to streamline our calving process and make it easier each year. Like many old farms, ours has infrastructure all over the place and this makes creating a good flow hard. We can't afford to build fancy new sheds to make life easier, but we can think a bit outside the box to achieve what we need. A big part of calving is all the motion that happens driving … [Read more...]
Smaller owner operated farm – is Lean relevant to me?
I regularly get asked whether lean is only suitable for larger farming businesses. The answer is absolutely not. It is just as useful for smaller farms. If you are an owner operator time is even more precious to you. It is even more important that you are as efficient and effective with your time as possible – you have no one else that you can depend on or delegate to. If you are an owner operator that is doesn’t have a minute the day spare, never can take time off, and feels like they are … [Read more...]
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