A simple checklist to help you prepare for a successful grain harvest
Successful grain harvest checklist:
- Process tickets faster
- Improve safety
- Automate bin inventory
- Reduce overtime labor
- Receive grain without internet
How to Process Tickets faster for a successful grain harvest
- Was your truck line 4 miles long?
- Did your drivers wait longer than an hour in your line?
- Was your pit waiting on trucks to process at the scale?
For the most part, consider striving for a 60-second or less interaction with each truck. That way, you can keep a constant truck flow. Ultimately, this allows you to utilize your elevator receiving equipment to its fullest receiving capacity.
3 Ways to Process Tickets Faster
• Start utilizing RFID
Bottomline, the RFID automatically applies weights and grades to each ticket. With this, your facility eliminates manual data entry errors.
• Start using a Grading Interface
Operators manually enter values from the grading interface. Automating this process, prevents shrinkage, discount penalties, and associated costs of incorrectly assigning bins.
• Start using a Message Board
Naturally, miscommunication from intercoms is nonexistent, because drivers have clear instructions on their next move.
How to Improve Safety for a successful grain harvest
- How long did it take for drivers to get out of their trucks and walk to the office to get their tickets?
- Did you have an employee running tickets out to drivers?
Not only do you have to worry about the safety of your employees but keeping drivers and customers safe is also important. By and large, when you keep drivers in their trucks and eliminate ticket runners, you will improve the overall safety at your facility.
Improve Safety at your Facility
• Start using an outdoor kiosk printer
Not only does the driver not get out of the truck, you no longer need an employee running tickets out to trucks.
How to Automate bin Inventory for a successful grain harvest
- Did you manually update dry-erase bin boards to track your grain?
- How long did it take you to model blends and make blend predictions?
When automating bin inventory, your business has peace of mind that all your inventory is accounted for. In addition, you can preserve the identity of your grain in each bin.
• Start using a bin management system
Automatic Visual Binboards
As soon as you receive grain, your company-wide shared bin boards are automatically updated. Say goodbye to manual measure-ups, updating dry-erase boards, or manually inputting data into a spreadsheet. That’s because the data populates automatically!
Quick Grain Bin Assignment
With two simple clicks, your team can assign grain to bins. In turn, you will have less overtime correcting mistakes of incorrect bin assignments.
Model Blends & Blend Predictions
Most importantly, a bin management system provides up-to-the-minute grain quality and quantity inventory information. Ultimately helping you model blends and make blend predictions in minutes. And let’s be honest, typically that task alone would typically take you hours to complete.
How to Reduce Overtime Labor
- Did you get to go home on time?
On average, at the end of the day during harvest, how long did you have to stay at work until the last truck was processed? Ideally, your scale house runs in near-real-time with your accounting system, and you have full transparency of your entire grain inventory.
Reduce Overtime Labor
• Start using an electronic document capture at the scale
This is important because you no longer need to leave your desk when looking for a bill of lading or other supporting documents for a ticket. In fact, all documents are attached directly to the ticket during the time of the transaction. Surprisingly, this easy-to-adopt solution gets you out of the office sooner each day, because you don’t have to file the mounds and mounds of documents that always seem to pile up.
How to receive grain without relying on the internet
- Did your facility have to stop receiving grain or use paper tickets because your internet went down?
The bottom line, if your internet goes down, does it take your company with it? According to a study by Gartner, the average cost of internet downtime for a company ranges from $5,600-$140,000 per minute! In this digital age, it is time to stop relying on the internet to accept your grain.
• Start using a scale automation and operation system that doesn’t rely on the Internet
What budget do I need for a successful grain harvest?
If your facility decides to add another solution down the road, it will seamlessly integrate with what you already have in place. Most importantly, all these solutions on the checklist integrate seamlessly with AGRIS and CINCH.
Let's talk!
If you’re interested in getting more information or pricing for the items on the checklist, let’s talk. Our team of experts is here to help you achieve your goals to succeed. We’re not here to sell you over-the-top solutions that won’t gain you anything.