In this Croptracker Use Case article we will be highlighting our bucket and bin tracking harvest workflows that allow for both detailed employee productivity tracking, and large harvest container inventory tracking using the Punch Clock/Production Practice and Harvest modules. In previous use case articles we have talked about how Croptracker can help quickly and accurately link field packed pieces to pickers. This workflow works to provide harvest inventory traceability at a larger, manageable, level for shipping, storage and packing teams, while ensuring labor efficiency and costs can be tracked accurately to the picker.
Benefits of Bucket and Bin Tracking
Farm owners and operators have a lot to gain in tracking employee productivity on an individual picking bucket or basket. Labor is often one of the highest costs for a farm. By tracking productivity, employers can better understand their labor costs in real-time and allocate them to specific crops or fields. This data is essential for accurate budgeting and for making data-driven decisions for future seasons.
By measuring individual output, employers can identify the most productive workers and the crews that are working most efficiently. This data can inform decisions about crew and task assignments to maximize overall farm output. It also allows employers to set realistic performance targets and identify areas where additional training or support may be needed for specific workers or groups.
Tracking who picked which produce is also a crucial component of quality control at harvest. If a container of produce is found to be of poor quality (e.g., bruised or unripe fruit), the farm can trace it back to the individual picker and provide targeted training to improve their picking technique. This also aids in food safety and recalls, as a well-implemented system can trace a container back to a specific field and picker, minimizing the scope of a recall.
Challenges of Bucket and Bin Tracking
While the benefits are clear, tracking individual productivity becomes very challenging when multiple workers are contributing to a single, shared container, such as a large bin or truck bed.
Lack of Individual Attribution: The most significant challenge is that there is no way to accurately attribute a specific quantity of produce to a specific worker. When multiple people are filling the same container, their individual contributions are merged, making it impossible to know who picked what.
Difficulty with Quality Control: Without knowing who picked what, it is impossible to provide specific feedback on quality. If a shared container has poor quality produce, management can't identify the individual responsible and therefore cannot implement targeted training. This makes it difficult to improve overall picking practices. Speciality, organic and delicate field grown crops take a lot of work to grow and losing all that effort at harvest time due to picking errors is unacceptable.
Reduced Incentive: Tracking individual picker units creates the opportunity to pay piece rates while using bulk harvest containers. A piece-rate system relies on individual accountability to incentivize workers to pick quickly and efficiently. When workers share a container without individual unit tracking, this direct link is lost. A highly productive worker's output gets pooled with the output of less productive workers, which can be demotivating and may not reward their higher effort.
Potential for Disputes: The lack of individual data can lead to disputes among workers or between workers and management. For instance, a worker might claim they contributed more than they are being credited for, or a crew might feel their overall productivity is not being accurately reflected.
To get around the shared-container problems, farm employers might resort to manual and time consuming paper processes. This is often inefficient, prone to human error, and adds significant administrative overhead when compiling data, especially with a large workforce. Croptracker’s digital individual bucket tracking combined with large harvest bin inventory tracking smooths out these administrative challenges, enabling growers to reap the benefits of individual picker productivity tracking while maintaining inventory records in larger units.
Croptracker’s Solution
To help better understand this process in Croptracker, we will use a tomato harvest example. In this scenario, two picking crews have been deployed to harvest field tomatoes. Each crew has a supervisor with the Croptracker app on their mobile device.
Buckets
All employees in both work crews have been set up in Croptracker in advance and have been issued employee badges. Supervisors will set up a Production Practice event to start the day, specifying the location they are harvesting in and selecting the Piece-Meal Harvest activity. This process can optionally include a piece rate for each bucket that is automatically total and calculated with the hourly wage for easy payroll generation.
When work crews arrive in the field, they scan their badges in the event on the supervisors device to start their hourly time tracking. As they fill and dump their harvested tomatoes in the large harvest bins, the supervisor simply needs to tap to tally buckets next to the employee. This can also be done with a mounted tablet and workers are able to tap their own bucket as they empty them.
Both crew supervisors can do this process at the same time and all progress is visible by admin users in the office. Additionally, if some workers are scouting during this time, they can use the Quality Control module to add a Location Inspections that can be logged against this event and locations.
Bins
When the harvest is finished or the bins are being removed from the field for processing elsewhere, the supervisor will switch to a Harvest event on the Croptracker app. There they can quickly create inventory records for the large harvest bins. Optionally bin labels can be applied to the bin with a scannable code and easily readable summary information.
Labelled bins can easily be followed through shipping, storage, packing and sales processes, enabling full traceability. Supervisors or QC team members are also able to attach inventory inspection details to better inform the team at packing and sales about incoming quality and to document picking errors that require retraining.
Reporting
At the end of the day, field supervisors are able to print work receipts displaying the individual buckets attributed to each picker as well as the total hours worked. Individual and crew level productivity can be assessed using several reports. Admin users are also able to generate easy-to-export payroll reports based on either piece rate and hourly wages or just hourly wages.
Harvested inventory reports are also generated with a few clicks on Croptracker and harvested inventory can be tracked through the rest of its product cycle. Inventory in Croptracker can be inspected again, shipped to customers or internal processing facilities. Harvested inventory can also be processed or packed with other inventory and linked to sales orders, making it simple to get a real measure of cost to produce vs profit.
Ultimately, leveraging Croptracker for bucket and bin tracking is a powerful way for farms to overcome common harvest challenges. By connecting individual picker productivity to larger harvest containers, growers can gain real-time insights into labor costs, improve quality control, and incentivize their workforce. Farms and orchards not only improve efficiency in the field but also maintain full inventory traceability at a manageable level, from harvest through to sale, leading to smarter business decisions and a more profitable operation. Get in touch to learn more about how this could work in your fields or orchards.
