Agricultural cooperative saves 1.2 million by avoiding harvest losses with lean management

As a result of a partnership between Copasul and Lean Institute Brasil on properties in the Naviraí region, farms in Mato Grosso do Sul are experiencing significant gains from adopting lean thinking in grain harvesting. The encouraging results can be illustrated by comparing the losses of a farm that has been using this methodology for three years with the average losses found among other producers in the region.

The numbers are significant and bring the producer an increase in margin that strengthens their business and makes other important investments in the property possible. The financial results for soybeans and corn add up to gains of approximately R$1.2 million over three years from harvest losses alone.

In addition, lean thinking brought further gains to the farms that adopted this practice. Among them, the following stand out:

• Greater awareness among operators and managers of the need for regular loss measurements, using a structured method.
• Better team engagement in recognizing and pointing out other improvement opportunities in support areas on the Farm, such as the maintenance workshop, silos, inventories, among others.
• Transparency about harvest performance, with advances in critical thinking about the importance of having indicators and tracking them frequently, helping in decision-making.
• Yokoten, or lateral deployment of learnings. With the pilot project at the Lean Farm, the cooperative began expanding the approach to four other farms under its guidance, with the support of the consultancy.

This project, started in 2018, is now going through a phase of consolidating the method and expanding to other interested producers. But how was all this possible?

How to start…

The harvest is a fundamental moment in the agricultural process carried out by every producer, regardless of the crop they grow. It is the moment to “reap the rewards” of all the hard work that begins with  soil preparation, goes through planting and the applications, and finally leads to harvesting and selling the crop. This final stage of the process, however, requires that certain requirements and standards be established beforehand, addressing the need for trained labor and for well-done planning that supports execution.

The harvest is a key stage of the production process, and doing it in the best way, adding strong and active management as well as metrics and indicators in the process, can bring gains year after year.

From a lean perspective on planning, harvest work begins long before the activity is actually carried out. Planning efficiently is crucial for aligning expectations, defining targets and indicators and allocating resources so that we have a clear action plan for achieving each of these objectives. For this, we also need responsible people and well-defined deadlines for all the proposed actions.

How to plan…

One way to guide this planning is a structured questionnaire that can help in applying the method. Through a few questions, the needs of the harvest are identified, also revealing any gaps the producer may have in their capacity planning. See below an example of part of the planning used in the grain harvest of Copasul's cooperative members.

Once this planning is done, it is subject to periodic follow-up, which will help ensure that everything is ready to start the harvest with as few unforeseen events as possible. It is also recommended that this planning, done up to this point at a more managerial level, be presented to everyone involved in the harvest process (image below), which  avoids communication noise, makes it possible to clear up doubts and is a decisive step for everyone to understand the property's greater objective, becoming even more involved in and committed to the activity.

Regarding the tracking of control variables in the harvest, 2 basic points are usually evaluated: hectares harvested per day (ha/day) and grain loss at harvest (in bags/ha). This information is posted on Daily Management (DM) boards so that everyone is aware of it, as in the example shown below:

How to manage daily…

Every day, the harvest team meets for 10 to 15 minutes to discuss how well the target set for the previous day was met, as well as  the problems found in the operation and what measures will be taken to solve them. Through DM, we collect important information for understanding the most recurrent problems in that season's harvest, in addition to communicating the priorities and any replanning for the day.

Daily management, as a management tool, enables decision-making based on measurements while there is still “time”, that is, when it is not too late to execute the previously defined strategy.

How to measure…

In the case of harvest loss measurements, a sampling methodology suggested by Embrapa is used. This monitoring is done by a full-time dedicated employee, who assesses the losses of each of the machines carrying out the harvest. The “harvest monitor” plays a fundamental role in the process, and their training must ensure that they have a sharp critical sense, along with the autonomy to stop the harvesting process in the event of losses above the desired level. It is suggested that they begin training in the method at least 15 days before the start of the harvest.

Once the grain harvest has begun, the monitor tracks the process indicators for that season in the field. Measurements are taken daily, assessing and recording the performance of every machine individually. The activity of monitoring and recording losses can be documented on video so that it can easily be carried out by other employees.

In the event of losses above the target set by the property or of patterns that deviate from normal, the evaluator calls the machine operator to make the necessary adjustments, followed by a new evaluation. In the event of successive measurement-adjustment cycles without success, or the operator's refusal to make adjustments, the help chain is triggered and another person, higher up in the property's hierarchy, comes to assist in solving the problem, if necessary.

For recording and tabulating data, Copasul developed its own collection system, an app used by the harvest loss evaluator and an online data platform, as shown in the images below.

Using this system, the producer gets data faster to carry out management and decision-making together with the team, in a visual and easily accessible way.

Keep improving

Once the harvest is finished, and with the data and information collected throughout the stage in hand, we hold a moment of hansei – or reflection – with the property's whole team, in which important points are discussed about whether or not the targets were met, the achievements, the season's average productivity, as well as the main problems encountered, and, if possible, the team leaves with an action plan already in place. We have seen that hansei becomes a moment for democratizing knowledge and consolidating learnings, generating important initiatives for adjusting course for the next season and greater alignment between management and operations.

What the hansei sessions we held taught us is that there are some essential elements for the success of the project:

• Direct involvement and full support from the owner.
• Commitment from the farm manager to make it happen together with the team.
• Engagement of operators and third parties toward improving performance.
• External support from the cooperative and the lean consultancy, working on the technical side of equipment and other management elements.
• Good planning of activities and sharing the purpose with the entire team.

Through simple concepts, lean thinking can help potentially raise gains and bring better performance to the farm, through greater productivity and less waste, while also generating greater involvement of employees and management in monitoring and improving processes in general.

With lean management, agricultural companies can make a leap in performance, creating long-term competitive advantages and further strengthening the sector, by giving frontline employees and leaders a new way of thinking and doing, becoming better prepared to meet current needs and future demands in food production and income in the rural world.