Is quality really job 1 on your farm?
By Glenn Cheater
September 01, 2010
The most surprising thing about Wayd McNally’s company isn’t that it’s successful. It’s that it’s not more successful.
The PEI entrepreneur founded Sensor Wireless in 2002. He has customers in more than 40 countries, from Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola and Nestlé to potato farmers cropping a few hundred acres.
Sales are currently about $1 million annually, but McNally expects them to increase at least eight-fold in the next five years. There’s a simple reason for that optimism – virtually every one of his damage-monitoring sensor devices pays for itself in the first few years or even months. These devices include Smart Spud, the Crackless Egg, and Produce QC (all instantly measure damage in potatoes, eggs, and fruit as they are harvested or processed) as well as ones used in industrial applications, such as bottling lines.
It isn’t hard to demonstrate how these devices can reduce damage and increase margins. Nevertheless, many people are reluctant and keep telling McNally, ‘Not right now.’
“You would think everyone would always be striving to do better than everyone else,” says McNally. “But there’s almost a resistance to that. Many people are comfortable just being in the middle.”
McNally was a young consulting agrologist helping a potato farmer figure out how to reduce bruising and cutting caused by his harvester when he came up with the idea of the Smart Spud. The device, the same size and shape as a real potato, can be tossed on the harvester’s conveyor, and will wirelessly transmit vibration data as it moves into the hopper and the truck. It not only allows you to easily zero in on problem areas – a slipping belt or chipped gear ring – but optimize things such as conveyor speed or incline.
“Whether you’re a small farmer or a running a billion-dollar bottling organization, figuring out where the problems are occurring is a guessing game,” says McNally. “If you can buy a system for a couple of thousand bucks and increase your pack-out by 10%, why wouldn’t you do that?”
Actually, McNally knows why. First off, technology is a pain. Think of when you first started using computers, email or GPS. Techies call this a learning curve – the rest of use four-letter words.
Secondly, efficiency is hard work. That 10% increase in pack-out isn’t likely to come from one thing. It’s a ‘one per cent here, half of one there’ kind of thing.
It’s easy to see why a Smart Spud or Produce QC (a similar device used for tree fruits, melons and tomatoes) works in theory but many people, the reaction is, ‘Let the neighbour try it first.’
And this is where Sensor Wireless offers a lesson to all of us, including those who aren’t in the produce or egg business.
In effect, these late adopters are saying, ‘The technology is cheap, looks like it will pay for itself very quickly and add significant dollars to my bottom line. But I don’t want the bother.’
OK, that’s a bit harsh. McNally frames it differently.
“Money is very tight in farming, everyone is watching their spending and, besides, they’ve all got a lot going on,” he says. “So it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.”
In fact, some of his earliest customers came on board because they had no choice. They contract to companies who insist on the highest quality and are quick to drop growers who don’t measure up. But others couldn’t wait to get their hands on one of his devices, including some small-scale farmers who, because of their size, had to wait longer to get a pay-back. Still, their reaction was, ‘I gotta have that.’
We all like to think we’re efficient and committed to quality but most of aren’t really that keen. As we rush to get the job done, our motto changes to ‘good enough.’
But that can change, says McNally. Over the years, he’s seen customers become committed to what he calls “a culture of quality improvement.”
“We see our customers becoming more aware of how their systems work and how they can go about making improvements,” he says. “Then they want to do more.”
They understand, he says, that quality and efficiency are built in small increments and it takes time before your efforts are rewarded.
The nice thing about the stuff McNally deals with – cracked eggs and bruised potatoes – is that you can precisely measure the results. Many key areas of business – such as marketing, human resources or risk management – don’t come with that kind of a scorecard.
We can say we’re dedicated to being the best we can be in all of those areas, but are we really? McNally’s experience shows that ‘good enough’ is a natural instinct. But to succeed in business, good enough really isn’t.
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