“They are crazy in those offices…”

26-04-2011 | Home | Expert opinion

There is a “new way of working” becoming more and more popular with General and Human Resource Management in companies. The concept is simple; employees increasingly want to have the freedom to work were they want, when they want and how they want. And human resource managers are giving in to their demands; otherwise they risk losing good staff or being unable to recruit new staff.

General Managers are seeing the “money effect” of this new trend. As the “new way of working” not only gives you quality staff who deliver, but also the opportunity to down size your office space by 20-40%.

The question is now, how does the feed-industry look at this. I know what you’re thinking: The feedmill is not an office block but a production plant. Those new technologies and ways of working are not for us. Let the guys in the office play with it, but not in my feedmill.

The question is however: “Are they really crazy in those offices?”

No, they are not. You are, if you don’t take the time to look into the new technologies (like e.g. Microsofts Sharepoint), and find out how you can use them in your plant.

Some examples. These technologies have great features for workflow-management with registration connected to it. It is perfect for all types of registrations from food safety to production registration.

Also handbooks can be stored and deployed easily. But what about information and knowledge management about the machinery and what to do when problem X occurs?

Of course your maintenance planning and control can be carried out with these tools. Also time-reports and shift turnover-reports can be shared easily, not only on paper but digitally so you can keep a perfect archive of all this. So I think they are not so crazy in those offices.

And in the end you are working on a more integrated registration of all information needed to make the feed-chain more food safe. Do you still think this is crazy?

Maybe you have an opinion on this. Hope to hear from you.