NZ Gourmet Waiuku Achieves Labour Efficiency with BumperCrop

NZ Gourmet Waiuku is a 4.7 hectare operation with 25 full time staff. They produce premium capsicums that are exported to Japan and Australia.

The operation has been using BumperCrop’s staff management system for the past 8 months. The rollout was led by the site's grower, Peter Schreuder. While travelling in the Netherlands last year, Peter visited many growers and reviewed the latest technologies being used. He saw that labour cost was a big focus and that technology was being used to systematically record and report on workers' performance, so as to break-down and attribute exact costs. After evaluating all of the available options, he decided to go with BumperCrop’s solution because of its ease of use, their local support and the ability to continually adapt the solution to their needs.

Peter needed a solution that was user friendly so that staff could be responsible for recording the work themselves, and so they didn't have to have supervisors spending their time on this. After an initial trial, staff feedback was that this was a very easy and simple-to-use option.

The system makes it very easy for staff to record their work and for managers to gain new insights from the data. Staff use individual mobile devices to scan WorkWave™ tags which ensure accuracy. The data is then sent to the cloud for automated analysis and report generation.

“We were able to see the results straight away after we rolled out the system. Each staff member now has their own individual scanner, where they scan into each row and select which task they are completing.” Data gets sent directly to the computer via wifi and result graphs are generated. This means that at any time of the day, Peter can see who is performing well and who needs to work on their speed. “The biggest value it's given to us is extra time. Our previous system involved manually inputting data which then got converted into graphs. This would take up to 4 hours to complete but now you can see results in less than 5 minutes.” Peter has found this solution particularly valuable with rising wage costs coupled with the difficulty in finding workers.

Peter is now planning to display the BumperCrop dashboards on TV monitors in the lunchroom, so that staff will be able to check their own performance at any time. He is also evaluating additional features, such as integration of BumperCrop generated timesheets into NZ Gourmet’s payroll system.