Registering cucumber harvest by weight and size

Gerard Aarts and his son Rens have a cucumber and tomato nursery of 96,500 square meter in Asten-Heusden. The greenhouse horticulture company consists of three sections: in one section, cucumbers are grown twice and TOVs once a year. In the other two sections Aarts cultivates cucumbers three times a year. This cropping strategy allows the grower to create a better labor distribution, and their products are continuously on the market.

The growers have been working with a path labour registration system since 1991. After 25 years, it was time for new techniques, says Aarts. "We were working on a new sorting line. We got stuck with the old software. We wanted a system that provides us with insight into the production of an employee per harvest per day and per cart. Labor is a major expense in our company: It's important that you know what is going on. We get our people to cut the cucumbers at 380 grams, but we see that also smaller ones are harvested."

Nursery Kwekerij Aarts discussed with robot supplier EMASC, sorting machine supplier Aweta and Work-IT , to see what the possibilities were for even more efficient production. "The beautiful thing about Work-IT is that the company thinks along with the customer and is open to their ideas", says Aarts. The growers chose Work-IT Cultivation, including the Scan-IT mobile app. "Every employee has his own smart phone, with the app he can scan things like cropwork, path and cart. We can accurately track the performance of our people and correct where necessary."

The quality of the product is paramount, says Aarts. Therefore it is important that the cucumbers are cut at the right weight. "We assume that our people are doing their best. But some have a better sense of cutting than others. From the data of the app, we know who might need more guidance. We will pass that on to team leaders, who spend a lot of time to direct our staff.

Gerard Aarts is pleased about scanning with the mobile phone. Previously, all data were entered manually, resulting in errors so that the numbers were unreliable. The implementation of Work-IT Cultivation and Scan-IT has been satisfactory. Aarts: "We have been helped well by our contact person Walter Koster from Work-IT. We have had explanations on location a few times and we can call whenever we have questions. We work step by step: only when we have one part well under control, do we move to the next one."

Gerard Aarts believes that obtaining reliable labor and product registration data is very important for the nursery. Labor, together with energy, is the biggest cost item for the company. "It's important to know what is going on. If 50 people each lose 1 minute, then you've lost almost one hour per day. If you do not have an overview, with a company you can go downhill rapidly. The beauty of software is that it is constantly adjusted to the wishes and ideas of the customer.