Your ticket to efficiency

摘要

This "sled and ticket" system is an easy way to maximize the harvesting efficiency of orchard pickers. Labor costs and supply always seem to be critical concerns. So how have you been able to maximize the efficiency of your labor force? Jack and Caleb Torrice, the father and son team at Fruit Valley Orchard in Oswego, NY, are using a system that they say has both increased their packout and reduced harvesting time. It simply involves a sled and a handful of tickets. Here's how it works: All of yourpickers will empty their bag of harvested fruit into the same bin, rather than each picker using their own bin. Each time the picker empties a bag into the bin, they receive a ticket. At the end of the day, all of the tickets are collected, and you divide the number of bushels by the number of tickets collected to determine the value of that day's harvest. Of course, this can add up to a huge number of bins. The solution: Tow the bins behind a tractor on a sled. If the sled itself gets full, one employee can drive a tractor up to the loading area, empty the sled, and then reload it with empty bins.