Any summary of work delays over a period of months will probably reveal a pattern of slip-ups and in a dairy the stops and starts can be from many causes – a teat sprayer has stopped spraying, the cups keep falling off, healthy cows got in the penicillin mob, another late start … and still the clean-up to go.
It’s possible to take it on the chin, blame someone and box on but the likely result, “lean management” specialists say, is the inefficiencies causing delays and wastage downstream can easily become embedded as a matter of habit.
In the Tokoroa farm dairy office of sharemilkers Brian Vergeest and Sheryl Hamilton, their farm’s “value stream” chart for the milking process has 16 key steps represented by blue sticky notes and 61 pink notes attached with comments on the causes of delays.
The chart spans almost the full width of one wall and is the first stage of an efficiency review under FarmTune – a “lean management” coaching programme being trialled in the Waikato and Canterbury by DairyNZ to improve farm efficiency and reduce working costs, as already demonstrated in a pilot programme in Southland.
For two months the Tokoroa farm team have posted complaints and problem comments about the milking process – Brian writing on 20 of the pink stickers, Sheryl signing a similar number and the remaining third coming from their three staff.
“The more pinkies we get on there, the better. Every day you think ‘we have a got an issue here’ but the idea is to write a note rather than see the problem in isolation and only look for the quick fix.”
Brian’s day starts at 3am to milk the 1000-cow herd that he and Sheryl, who have both been sharemilking for 18 years, half-own. Any time savings in the milking process would offer the biggest benefit when milking five hours each morning and four hours each evening.
Their herd’s milk production is already at the top end and last season produced 486,000kg milksolids (MS), which is an average 485kg MS/cow and 1350kg MS/ha – a performance significantly better than the LIC/DairyNZ average for South Waikato of 389kg MS/cow and 1152kg MS/ha.
This was achieved despite 85ha, almost a quarter of the 358ha forestry conversion farm, being planted in pasture only three years ago.
But they see huge potential for FarmTune to create more efficiencies that will lower costs and further improve productivity.
Brian sees the notes representing opportunities for improvement rather than a negative count.
Some problems have to be fixed immediately, such as the teat sprayer filter being cleaned so milking can resume, but for long-term savings they want to formulate ways to prevent delays and wastage.
Other problems, like lame cows, might require outside help.
“I know it’s not related to how the cows are being handled. In co-operation with the farm owners we have had a lameness expert, a guru, in to help us sort this out. He has taken videos and will be back with his proposed solutions.”
The Waikato programme has the entire staff from 10 farms attending fortnightly workshops at Karapiro conducted by Sarah Watson of Christchurch-based PeopleMAD (Management and Development), previously a team leader for DairyNZ’s people development team, and Ian Lines of Cambridge-based Lean Group.
Their eight four-hour workshops coach the farm teams on how to apply the principles of lean management to improve the workflow of processes such as milking, feeding out, calving and treating animals.
Waikato FarmTune co-ordinator Jo Sheridan, a former DairyNZ farm consultant widely known for facilitating farmer discussion groups, visits the chosen farms to assist with their use of value streams.
“It would be easy to say at the start ‘I have a solution’ but the first step is to look for problems in a value stream,” Jo says.
After two months and halfway through the course each farm had value streams for at least one major work procedure, such as milking, and on the Tokoroa farm’s dairy office wall there’s a milking subset – a separate value stream – charting the process elements and delay comments for separately handling cows that are lame or being treated with penicillin.
“The idea is to go as deep as you can to find more about the problems before you start trying to solve something.”
Vehicle manufacturer Toyota, a leading corporate exponent of lean management, describes this step as “material and information flow mapping”.
The FarmTune workshop days demand a full commitment from farm teams, especially those having to travel an hour or more to Karapiro after the morning milking and after four hours of tuition making the long drive home to the evening milking.
“It’s a big day but staff participation is really good and everyone is enjoying it. We are identifying the issues and the good thing about it is there’s no finger pointing,” Sheryl says. It’s about the job and not the person.”
On their wall chart, so far, there are five pink sticker notes about late morning starts to milking but it’s a problem with no simple answer, Brian says.
In the autumn the cows seem tired of being milked, they’re not urgently full of milk and seem reluctant to head through the open gate for the dairy race.
A task like opening the gate into the race would seem straightforward but two sticky notes on Brian and Sheryl’s wall chart show something as basic as staff not noticing missing gate bungees can disrupt the morning start.
Brian totally owns his own problem of sometimes leaving his cellphone on the kitchen bench and not being contactable – one note says the helicopter pilot was kept waiting for the go-ahead to spray but couldn’t get confirmation.
An obvious solution is to make sure Brian carries his phone but he can’t always hear it ringing, as when riding a quad bike, so maybe there’s perhaps the need for a second mobile phone on the same number … and a spare phone charger at the dairy office.
A further step along the milking process described as “milk into vat” has comments about cup removers – the cords that pull the clusters away from the udder – being cut “too long or too short”, which means the clusters are at different heights to reach, find and attach to the next cow. After a busy milking session the second herd is coming into the yard and again there are sticky notes about lateness and technical problems, such as the pulsator not working properly and a blockage in the in-dairy feeder line.
Young cows have been mixed with the older mob in the yard, the yard entry was not hosed clean after the second herd and there’s a problem with cow identification tags – all comments that Brian regards as an attempt to sort out a better way of doing things.
“The ear tag can be away from you, it’s faded and dirty and hard to read and you’re busy so your number 9 can look to someone else like a 7 or a 1. Maybe we should put an ear tag in each ear and at times have two people recording cows.”
Eventually the notes along their value streams will be transferred to spreadsheets that become the basis of a ‘living document’ for guiding each farm process.”
In summarising the FarmTune programme, Sheryl says a key advantage is it allows them to revisit and formalise every aspect of the key processes on the farm that were previously done based on their own experience and common sense.
“This will make it far easier for our current and future staff, and for Brian and I, to undertake each task based on best practice.”
The 5S’s
A key lean management tool is ‘5S’.
It requires an application of the following initiatives:
SORT – Decision Making
Remove impediments. Identify what you use and need in an area, remove items that are not required or rubbish, repair broken equipment. Sorting is about removing anything you don’t need in the work area so you don’t need to work around it, saving time and taking away the risk of double ordering items because you can’t find them.
Eg, fencing equipment doesn’t need to be kept at the dairy, or empty chemical drums that haven’t been recycled or that broken pump that you haven’t got around to fixing yet.
SET – Empowerment
Be organised – things you use regularly are easy to see and readily available where you use them. Giving these items a permanent home makes them quick and easy to find when you need them, saving time – no more searching for things.
Eg, the spanner you use for adjusting the pulsators or the knife you use for removing the leg bands from marked cows.
SHINE – Ownership
Clean, inspect and maintain – taking pride in your environment, keeping it clean, with frequently used items put away in the right place. Shine makes it easy to see if equipment is safe and in good working condition. Equipment is easier to maintain if it is clean. The result is fewer breakages, less chance of delays from breakdowns, nicer work environment.
STANDARDISE – Behaviour (individual)
Do the Same task in the same way – setting staff up for success because it’s clear how jobs get done and who is responsible.Standardise means everyone takes the same approach so results are more consistent.
This takes pressure off the owner or manager to always be there or always having to check whether things have been done right.
Relief staff should be able to do the job the same way as well. Standardise is critical for compliance. and health and safety.
Eg, written procedure for treating mastitis cows which includes photos, procedure available at the point of use to act as a visual reminder for staff to help them get it right every time.
SUSTAIN – Culture (collective behaviour)
Keep up the changes – maintaining these changes happens when the team culture has everyone taking responsibility and valuing the benefits of 5S. Including taking responsibility for putting things away when they have finished with them, cleaning equipment properly and checking for wear and tear, following the procedures to ensure a consistent result.
Eg, marking treatment cows the same way so everyone knows and recognises where in the treatment cycle the cow is. Or following the correct method of mixing the teat spray and filling it up at the end of milking so it won’t run out during milking causing delays.
You can’t do just one or two of the 5S’s – sustained success for the whole team comes from understanding the benefits and committing to the process, that is committing to doing all of the 5S’s.
Farm facts:
Sharemilkers: Brian Vergeest, Sheryl Hamilton
Location: Tokoroa
Farm area: 358ha total
Contour: Rolling
Development: Forestry to dairy conversion
Herd: 1000 crossbred cows
Production: 486,000kg MS 2014-15
Dairy: 54-bail rotary
Staff: Three full-time, one part-time
Peak milking time: Five hours AM, four hours PM
Challenges: Cold climate, 640 metres above sea level.
Feed crops: 25ha swedes.
