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THECOMMERCIAL GREENHOUSEGROWER • JULY 2017
OPTIMISING LABOUR •
Daria isproudof thehighly colouredworkstations andhere
is seenby thepottingmachinewithplant forks in
various sizes.
workpatterns.
This systemhas beenusedwhen a transplanting line is
taking youngplants from another site and they decided
tobring freshplants for eachplantingday rather than
expend effort onmaintaining a stock of plants at the
transplanter area.
Onebusiness has found that the streamliningof
productionhas started to influence theplanningof their
facilities. Obviously, constructors of new facilities are not
yet fully integratedwithprocessmanagement andSmiths
Gardens, inAurora, Oregonwere having an interesting
debatewith staff about the use of their newdespatch
facility. The staff were starting tomanage their new
loading areamore effectively so that thequestion arose -
‘howbigdoes this area need tobe’?
When visited, just before the season, thiswas the
question uppermost inEricSmith’smind. Later, in the
peakdelivery seasonhemay have to rethink his earlier
conclusions. So far, they have saved 25% in this area and
have the goal of saving$400,000 in thewhole company.
EricSmithwas alsoworking at continuous improvement
in their accident record. He commented that staff insur-
ancewas quite high and they are counting accident free
days for their 500 staff (1200 at peak) whichmeans that
currently they have 77days accident free and200days
on theAurora site. The company’smain ‘thrusts’ are
making it a great place towork; improving technology
andprocesses to copewith theminimumwage increase
(moving from $10-$15per hour); focussingon continuous
improvement and improvingoverall working systems.
At Northwest Horticulture inWashington,MarkBuckle
explained to the study tour group that labour costs
represent 60%of sales and how they had started touse
LEAN to streamline their workprocesses. They are half
way throughnow and he showed the group the chart of
operations andnotes for the next reviews of these items.
He has the objective of staff working through the system
to refine initial improvements and then toget the final
version that theywould like. In their case theyweredoing
thiswith the aidof a couple of consultants, Nick and
ElizabethPeters, who came into the company towork on
the operation charts for them. In future the companywill
alsobebuilding newmachinery to further reduce their
labour usage.
UK experience
It is quite usual for the staff concerned to takedirect
ownershipof the analysis and that iswhat has beendone
at BinstedNursery inBarnham,West Sussex. In 2009,
the LEAN systemwas introduced to the company under
the leadershipof Paul Bennett. In 2010 theprocesswas
takenupbyDariaPawlikwhowas new to the company
at that time and hadprevious experiencewith another
company in the system. It was decided toput six people
from thepermanent staff, team leaders and supervisors,
into training.
After some initial difficulties, they developed a system
usingworkstations (somemobile) with colour coding
andnumbering tools and equipment and set about a
new regime of continuous improvement of their work in
perennialswhere they are handling andpackingproducts
andorganising cropoperations. They investigatedwaste
reduction in time andmaterials, and ingivingpriority to
jobs that increase value to the customerswhilst reducing
jobs that don’t have added value.
A small example of thiswas thepreparationof plants for
marketingby cleaning the soil surface aswell as topping
upwith fresh compost. They revised this having realised
that customers did not want liverwort but alsodidnot
needmore compost. By adopting a standardmethodof
working that saved time for permanent staff and couldbe
easily communicated to agency staff andworkerswhose
first language is not English, they demonstrated that sig-
nificant labour savings couldbemade.
From aproductivity level they have had up to60%
improvement in efficiency and inpacking from a level of
six trays per personper hour theywere able to reach 11
trays per hour in their current production. The ‘KANBAN’
(‘bill-board’ in Japanese fromToyota) systemof just in
time supply to thepacking line ensures that all materials
are available to theworkers and that their replacement
from a storewithin the company and external re-ordering
are controlled.
This year they are using the company, FeddenUSP, to
provide themwith further training in the LEANAcademy
(NVQ Level 2) with staff, so that the system can expand
intoother areas of work and involvemore staff indifferent
levels of the company. They have alsobeen able to
arrange for government fundingof trainingwhich is now
being conductedon site. Daria says that this hasmany
advantages for them, theprimary onebeing that the staff
work on analysing their ownproduction systems and
potential problems rather than using theoretical models
drawn from the other industries.
