Many are familiar with the phrase “stop and smell the roses,” which encourages us to take a break from our usual hustle and bustle. A presentation at Cultivate’22, however, flipped that notion on its head. Cathryn Fageros, the business process improvement manager at Ball Seed Company, spoke about using the fast-paced and structured roles of the corporate world and integrating them into horticulture.
(Fageros admitted that while 2022 was her first year in the horticulture industry, she has a valuable career history in operations.)
Lean is often used as a synonym for efficient, and so Fageros began by asking which practices can make your businesses leaner. She said at Ball, they have distilled them down to four:
- Understanding the customer and what they value
- Building deep understanding of the process
- Reducing waste, process unevenness and overburden
- Continuously improving the process and outcomes
“Because this industry is seasonal, evenness for staffing is key,” Fageros said about the third point.
But how does an organization approach these practices, which can appear a little vague at first glance?
A tip Fageros provided is to attack your organization’s biggest problem first, whether that’s the customers, the processing, the waste or not improving.
To understand the customer, talk with them to understand their needs and then clarify the priority of those needs and where your process isn’t meeting expectations. Then, make a plan and take action to deliver measurable improvement. “The secret sauce is to quantify things,” Fageros said. “Get numbers.”
For a deep understanding of your process, she suggested taking a Gemba walk. As described by author James P. Womack, a Gemba walk is “an opportunity for staff to stand back from their day-to-day tasks to walk the floor of their workplace to identify wasteful activities.” Fageros said the walk is an opportunity to “get out of the chair or greenhouse to understand before you try to change something.”
Document your processes and double check with staff to see if what you observed matches with what they do. Once you have that information, create a value stream map, noting how much value you add at each step of your process, with measurements, to look at your big picture.
According to the model Fageros works under, there are eight forms of waste, often abbreviated to TIMWOODS: Transport, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, Defects and Skills. Waiting and Overprocessing are great first places to look for waste.
“The number one waste form is waiting,” Fageros said. “Number two is wasting skills – everyone in this industry is an expert in something, so share that knowledge. Number three is wasting inventory, including your time.”
Once your wasteful areas are identified, prioritize and implement process changes to eliminate that waste.
Fageros suggested using the Kaizen cycle for improvement. Kaizen is defined as an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap significant improvements. Kaizen is usually based on cooperation and commitment – in contrast to approaches that use radical or top-down changes for transformation.
“Measure what makes sense so we can track our improvement progress over time,” she said. “And communicate your successes broadly so that others can learn too.”
Joining Fageros for the presentation was Tom Wheeler, director of growing operations for Bell Nursery USA.
“With nine sites, logistics create challenges and positives,” Wheeler said. “Transport has a huge opportunity for savings, and does overproduction, especially coming off the COVID spike and gardening fever and things going back toward normal.”
He mentioned wanting to become more lean with overprocessing too. “We’re all focused on quality but also on making money – and we’re our own biggest critics of our products,” he said. “Consumers might not be as discerning as we are.”
Wheeler also said his operation is always looking at efficiencies, even with the number of plants per pot. “We like to minimize plants per pot when we can – and adjust our production schedule based on the time of year,” he said.
To help him and other operations with their goals, Fageros said key performance indicators (KPI) are needed. “Have workers be responsible for key measures,” she said. “Put targets down so you can try to fix the gap between where you are and where you want to be.”
Another tip Fageros gave: Figure out your needs on your own if you can, because consultants are expensive, both with your money and your time.
by Courtney Llewellyn
