Increased Productivity Of Harvesters Through Reduced Displacement With The New Opening Format Of Stalls

 

Increased Productivity Of Harvesters Through Reduced Displacement With The New Opening Format Of Stalls - Success case Alfacitrus

Knowing the Company:

It was from Aleixo's experience and the persistence of work on his son Pedro's plantations that Alfa Citrus was born in 1995.

Currently, the brothers Emílio, José Eduardo, Pedro and Nelson rule the toil on the farms of Botucatu, Engenheiro Coelho and Mogi Mirim and maintain good and traditional production practices without leaving state-of-the-art technology aside.

With an infrastructure spread over 1,600 hectares, which includes the farms of Botucatu, Engenheiro Coelho and Mogi Mirim, located in the interior of São Paulo, in addition to the Packing House, and the dedication of 500 workers, they are today one of the 5 largest producers and packers of country oranges and tangerines.

*Some data was not exposed to maintain the company's secrecy.

Challenge:

In partnership with Avilla Consulting, a project was started to identify opportunities for improvement in the process, initially focused on the company's Orange and Tangerine Farms in the Botucatu region.

During the monitoring carried out in the harvesting sector of the farms, a high loss of time was identified by employees, due to the large displacement generated between the plant to be harvested and the place where these fruits were dumped, thus generating low productivity in the sector, where the big challenge would be to change the opening of harvesting stalls, so as not to jeopardize the rest of the operation such as moving tractors and clerks, in addition to monitoring the quality of the work of the harvesting teams by parts of the crews and production pointers (Responsible for the harvest team)

After several analyzes and application of the study of times and motion associated with our SIT Software (Integrated Technology System), and a few more tools, we managed to reach an expressive result in reducing the harvester's daily displacement time and consequently increasing its efficiency and production.

*Some data was not exposed to maintain the company's secrecy.

The following steps were taken:

• Study of the times and movements of the average distance covered in several orchards;
• Analysis of possible solutions;
• Definition of the most viable method;
• Tests with the harvesting and loading team;
• Analysis of results, through Chronoanalysis and SIT reports.
• Creation of the new procedure to be followed (POP).

Solution:

In order to make the comparison after implementation, we started the process through Chronoanalysis.

In order to identify the actual cycle time of each box harvested, we carried out the initial chronoanalysis of the process where these data were our initial base, where we reached an E/R (Reasonable Expectation) of 21, as shown below.

Initial chronoanalysis:

*Some data was not exposed to maintain the company's secrecy.

After the initial analysis and application of some tools, one used as an example was the spaghetti diagram, in order to identify inconsistencies in the process flow, below is a visualization of the 3D map used to apply the tool.

*Some data was not exposed to maintain the company's secrecy.

After applying the necessary tools, 3 possibilities of the format to be done emerged, where after a deeper analysis and through tests, we arrived at the best format and with greater gain in the displacement time of the lanyards, where this model of opening a stand, not it would affect other activities, such as collecting the boxes and loading the trucks.

After the analyzes and tests were completed, the new method was implemented to all other harvesting teams in the company.


Results:

After implementation, the Chronoanalysis of the new implemented method was redone, where we obtained a significant improvement in the E/R (Reasonable Expectation), going from the initial measurement of 21 to 33, thus having a 55% increase in the reasonable expectation of the harvesters.

Chronoanalysis after changing the method:

*Some data was not exposed to maintain the company's secrecy.

Thus, proving that the reduced percentage of (58%) in the displacement of harvesters, compared to the new Chronoanalysis that showed us an increase of (55%), were in fact effective and transformed into better efficiency and productivity in the harvesting activity.

*Some data was not exposed to maintain the company's secrecy

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And through this improvement in the stand opening process, we were able to increase the overall per capita volume of the harvesting teams by 34.7%.