Should I implement Lean? Should I implement lean if I am a Contract Milker or Manager? I get this question a lot and my answer is absolutely YES. Lean is helping you and your team so it is going to be you that benefits from implementing the tools. It is you that is in the business on a daily basis dealing with issues, inefficiencies and day to day work. Lean helps you to work smarter not harder and this will save you time and frustration. Further much of what you do on one farm is also very … [Read more...]

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 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...]

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...]