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...]

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...]

We don’t just want to survive the future, we want to thrive in it. Change is inevitable.   Happy New Year! It is always exciting to start a new year and while there is still quite a bit of uncertainty in the air around the world, we need to start on the front foot. Everything can be overcome in one way or another. No doubt some of you have set yourselves some personal New Years Resolutions.... this is also a good time for all farmers to think about their farming businesses and what they want … [Read more...]

A lot of time and motion and waste During and after calving, a big part of our jobs is to feed all the calves. In this process there is a lot of motion on farm and also a lot of non value added work. Most farms have calves spread all over the farm in various paddocks. While the calves start inside in sheds (which usually are also spread all over the farm), after 3 or so weeks they get moved outside. In order to feed calves twice a day to begin with milk is transported to all these calves in … [Read more...]