It was clear that packing equipment and related systems would need improving if the higher outputs were achieved. With difficult margin levels, any investment would have to be paid for through increased efficiencies and not just from higher sales volumes. With questionable reliability of existing software, the extra investment in IT would ideally be based on a new package. The farm approached us for advice.

We found that some of the information on which to make decisions was not available from the incumbent software package. Procedures enforced by the package were not sufficiently flexible to meet the proposed ideas for physically handling product from picking though packing. Other data was difficult (costly) to collect and not always accurate. In short, physical improvements to current hardware were not going to make a significant difference - the entire software systems was eligible for replacement. With a wide experience of production systems, we were able to generate a vastly superior package - now known as UNIFarm. Other farms contributed to the statement of requirement for the software design team to work with, and the end result is a flexible solution built on modern database technology.

On deployment of the new system, a bang or bust approach was made and it was rewarding for all to see a trouble free installation. The software needed a few tweaks to fine tune the weighing machine parameters and the speed of the human interface, but these were relatively insignificant and the system now works without any IT intervention, save for replacing backup media each day.

The farm has four portable time recorders, which require little human interface, save for scanning a bar code and selecting a worktype. The four units are sufficient for 40 direct workers and a fifth is soon to be installed for indirect labour capture. The units send their information to the main system once or twice a day, and save for correcting the odd missing time (human not clocking on) there is little intervention required to generate pay slips, pickers efficiency reports and so on. In the past this effort took up a man day each week!

Product weights are captured with three computerised weighing scales, which use touch screens and barcode readers. These work without much human intervention, just the odd dab of the touch screen to select different product types as they arrive for weighing, or where a quality problem exists. The displays are highly visible and in colour, and operators are able to weigh much more product in an hour than was previously possible. In fact, the need to supervise the data entry and make corrections (as previously) is now a redundant operation. As the farm volume has increased, as planned, and the product mix has changed to include much more pre-packed volume, the number of weighing events has obviously gone up. Introducing a fourth weighing unit has enabled the farm to cope with this - yet the pack-house work force has reduced by two people. Supervisory time is no longer diverted to managing computer records and so product gets delivered right first time - right weight, right quality, right age, right label.

Whilst not yet deployed the database technology used within UNIFarm can be web-enabled for other web services/sites to interface to. It is anticipated that buyers and/or supermarkets may in the future, insist that this type of interface is used, as it avoids the effort and cost of fax and human interventions when dealing with orders and sending.