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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

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 […]

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 […]

I have been running my LeanFarm training with farmers in Tasmania over the last few weeks and have come across some great examples of simple lean tools applied on farm to make life easier, more efficient, safer and prevent frustrating problems. Visualisation is a simple lean tool that can make your farm more productive. One […]

Safe Farm using Lean: A Lean Farm is also a Safe Farm. Lean tools such a Visualisation and 5S can significantly help to improve safety on your farm. Our team has been working on improving our safety processes. We had a session about all hazards on farm and it really reinforced how dangerous our farms […]

A lean dairy farm also needs a lean dairy shed or milking parlour. Is your dairy shed or facilities a lean dairy shed? Are you thinking about building a new dairy shed and want to incorporate lean thinking into your shed design? I have been talking to a farmer in NZ that is in this […]

One of the key improvements we are making on our farm is the introduction of a lean tool called visualisation. This is about making things easy to understand using visual signs, symbols, colours, labels and so on. Visualisation is all around us in our everyday life. It helps us to grasp a situation quickly and […]