Tedious calculations on a calculator are very much a thing of the past at Villiersdorp-based Chiltern Farms’ packhouse. This after FarSoft developed a bespoke mobile Blueberry QC App for the business.

Chiltern’s quality assurance manager, Sumé Olivier, said they found the app a breeze. “The visual aspect is a sheer pleasure. After choosing a photo, we’re notified whether it’s in spec or what the defect level is. In short, it’s awesome.”

Assistant quality assurance manager Tracy Kotze agreed. “Kudos to the FarSoft team! Our QC team is enjoying the app thoroughly – the selection of the pictures and scoring certainly make their work lives less complicated.”

According to FarSoft director Gerhard Nel, not only can the defect threshold be set up according to marketing standards, but also for different customers. “Thus the app indicates how to interpret the fruit.

“Driven by a quality control matrix, this solution is highly customisable, enabling packhouses to manage defects to the nth degree. In addition, it allows for detailed grower feedback and enables timeous and better defect management during the harvest season.”

Further to this development, Gerhard expounded on FarSoft’s continuing work in expanding capture functionality for bins, pallets and QC to Android platforms. “Mobile is the future. Hence we’re building mobile apps for managers and growers to bring real-time, easy-to-understand information to them for both Android (using Xamarin) and iOs (using Swift) platforms. All these apps utilise web services and APIs that we build and maintain.

“But the work is never done. So, at the moment we’re busy researching and developing Kotlin for further Android development. Watch this space!”

CAPTION: Chiltern’s Ongana Luthuli is loving work on the mobile Blueberry QC App.