We started mating this week and so last week we had our Mating team training session as we do every year to refresh the team on our mating process, make any adjustments needed and answer questions. Mating is a critical process on farm - its important to get it right. So its one process where its a good idea to have a clear visual standard process that everyone follows. We use one page standard key point charts that are our standard processes and are displayed on the wall in our team … [Read more...]
Time for a Calving Review
Stop and Reflect Today we had a busy day on farm. We've finished calving and we have mating starting next week so some important things to do including our big picture strategy session, calving review and mating/ bull training. Firstly if you have just finished calving then its a great time to do a review of how the calving period went with your team while its fresh in everyone's minds. Team Feedback We did that today with our team. We asked everyone to think about and write down "what … [Read more...]
How much “motion” waste do you do each day on farm?
Over the last few weeks we have been doing some good old fashioned time and motion studies using 21st century apps. We are experimenting with this to understand where our time is spent and how much non value added "motion" we are doing every day. Tracking your movement on farm during your day is an extremely powerful tool to use to begin to understand the flow of what you are doing - your spaghetti diagram. Here are a couple of images of two of Mat's work days over calving recently. (He has been … [Read more...]
Data on Farm – you’ve got to love it!
One great thing about farming is the amount of data available on almost every element of farming and yet we hardly tap into it. Data is so valuable and it helps you look at your farm in a different way. Not for everyone but so powerful! Being an engineer I am a number geek and love data. We are fortunate that we have a system that captures significant data each day on our herd. But while we have used basics we never really dive into real details and analysis. So over the last few weeks we have … [Read more...]
Farm Strategy Planning
During the last few workshops I have run with farmers, there has been huge interest in our farm's one page strategy document. Lean is not only about the tools we often talk about, but also has a huge strategic component. In a lean company a big process is strategic planning and cascading goals throughout the organisation - this is known as Hoshin Kanri in Japanese (goal policy deployment process in translation). While on our farm we keep the process much more simple and not as robust as … [Read more...]
Dry off – our easy lean “moving assembly line” process – working smarter not harder with lean.
Dry off - the crappy job that is done at the end of the season that no one looks forward to. Well with our lean "moving assembly line" dry off process, our team actually look forward to it. It is significantly less stressful for our people and cows. We have improved quality, reduced stress, improved hygiene/ cleanliness, reduced mastitis, reduced costs, and reduced the time significantly - our fastest round 13 minutes for 50 cows. Average 34 minutes/ 100 cows. It was a wacky idea last season and … [Read more...]
New Grass management – do it well & keep cows safe
New Grass - is it safe? For some farmers its "new grass" time. Good new grass management is vital to ensure good long term growth and cover. But even more important is good awareness of nitrate poisoning and keeping our animals safe. You will be surprised how many people (even those that have some Ag courses behind them) are not aware of risks of nitrate poisoning. Sadly we have lost calves in the past due to poor process and lack of awareness. Why? Well it was our error for "assuming' everyone … [Read more...]
Giving & receiving feedback – a key skill for farm success
Last week during our weekly CI (Continuous Improvement) session we started a series of discussions about some “soft skills” with our team. We will continue to work on these “soft skills’ over the coming months. Soft skills are our people skills – they cover communication, leadership, management, work ethic, teamwork, problem solving, decision making, time management, networking and conflict resolution among other things. Our particular focus is on constructive feedback and moving from … [Read more...]
Lean is about working smarter not harder
Listen to this great interview with Radio NZ for the Country Life show about how lean can help your farm. It talks about what we are doing on our farm, how we are introducing different lean principles and the big benefits we have seen so far. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/countrylife/audio/2018703869/working-smarter-not-harder-the-lean-approach-to-dairying … [Read more...]
A Lean Farm is a People Farm
A Lean Farm focuses on and develops people. Last week we had our end of season Performance and Personal Development Reviews. We have trialled various versions of templates and formats for our reviews, continuously improving them to suit our needs and attempting to make them as simple yet effective as possible. We are not perfect yet and will continue to evolve these over time. Our format now is standard for everyone and contains 4 one page documents for each review – First Quarter, … [Read more...]
A Lean Farm is a strategic farm
Lean isn’t just about the tools like 5S, Visualisation and Standard Work. Importantly lean starts with the high level business strategy and how a farm’s goals are cascaded through the business into tangible actions for the whole team. This ensures that goals don’t just stay goals but can be practically achieved to take your farm forward. On our farm we hold an annual strategy day every year with the whole team. We ran this on Friday followed by our end of season team event. During our … [Read more...]
Lean Visual Management of calves
Lean Farming and Visualisation A key lean tool is visual management. This is about having real time, live information available and visual for the team to use to manage a process or area. This helps anyone immediately see what is happening and make real time decisions based on actual data. It also helps to immediately spot problems and therefore react quickly to any issues. Lean at Clovelly Farm Mark Miers and his team and Clovelly Farm in Tasmania have very impressive visual … [Read more...]