Australian tomato growers use RFID to boost productivity
13 August, 2009
category: RFID
d’Vineripe, an Australian tomato growing company, has enlisted FieldAtWork to provide an RFID solution for monitoring employee task completion times in order to improve productivity.
Under FieldAtWork’s system employees are given HF RFID tags with their own unique ID number, allowing d’Vineripe to identify each individual employee. Next to each row of tomatoes FieldAtWork has set up a board containing RFID tags prescribed for each of the 8 tasks employees are expected to perform, as well as a tag identifying the row of tomatoes.
Before employees begin a particular task they use hand held RFID readers to scan their ID tag, the appropriate task tag, and the tag identifying the row of tomatoes. The process is repeated when the task is completed. At the end of the day the data is logged into a time sheet program and analyzed.
d’Vineripe intends to use the data to identify workers who are under performing as well as determine which processes are inefficient. In the future d’Vineripe plans to develop training programs aimed at increasing worker productivity.
d’Vineripe employs approximately 150 workers who operate an eight hectare hi-tech glasshouse containing 260,00 individual tomato plants with yearly yields of 4,600 tons.