With great success Novo Fruit Packers upgraded its previous carton management system with the FarSoft one 14 months ago. Appsource director André Swart, who collaborated on the project, explained, “Large format displays placed at different points in the packhouse provide immediate feedback to management and packers through the software’s dashboard interface. The fruit specification, packer information and weight of each carton are stored, providing management with valuable information to review and plan upcoming schedules.”

Real-time weight checking has potential financial benefits as it improves the visibility of over-or under-packing and improves management’s ability to manage packing as it happens.

Novo product manager Wardo Conradie is extremely pleased about the results thus far. “It’s enabled us to implement an incentive scheme for the packers because they can view their individual and team packing rates continuously on-screen. Not only have packing rates improved dramatically, but it’s also led to healthy competition on the floor. Production manager Thinus Loock has made the system his own, which is exactly what was needed in terms of someone driving the system.

“So, having established a base according to our 2017 results, we’ve been able to track our improvement rates. And best of all, April was our finest month thus far in terms of margins.”

Being fully conversant with the system’s capabilities now, Conradie said that Novo intended to break the results down into varieties and packing formats to enable ever-better efficiencies.

CAPTION: Appsource director André Swart, Novo Fruit Packers product manager Wardo Conradie, Farsoft project manager Mariska Cubitt and FarSoft director Gerhard Nel.