Hampshire: Lean on the land - applying learnings from Japan

Join us at Whitewool Farm for a practical workshop to demonstrate how a Japanese automotive technique can be used to improve business profits with Jamie and Will Butler, and Neil Fedden, Managing Director of Fedden USP. 

Neil works with businesses to help create time, that’s then up to the operator to use appropriately. Time to be used to focus on the business and increase profits or more time off farm to spend with family or other pursuits. The workshop will help you get more engagement from staff and show you how to get ‘action plans’ done.

Jamie and his brother Will operate a diversified farming business, with glamping sites, fly fishing, corporate days, clay shooting and self-storage running alongside their 445 ha dairy and arable farm. They use lean management to help identify areas of efficiency and areas for opportunity to lean into their land.

You will hear Jamie's progress since the last KPI meeting at Whitewool and how that links into how he already uses lean principles to manage a successful business. Applying the principles of lean management, Neil will discuss case studies of applications from the farming sector, including from dairy to practically highlight how to apply these to your farm.

10 years ago Neil supported Jamie and the team at Meon Springs to improve the day-to-day routine of milking, scraping and feeding. Jamie says now the efficiency is second to none and almost an hour has been taken off the morning routine, allowing more time for other jobs or an earlier finish for staff.

From clamp to tank

We will walk this process and identify all the potential wastes. Looking at a cow day, what is her ideal, how much time she wants to spend eating, drinking, lying and what affects this and how can we improve.

This is a workshop for the whole farm team, to talk through processes together and share improvements and best practices. You can then go home and apply these lean management techniques to your own business. Standardised processes can be used to inform and train new people as they come on to farm too. 

This event will cover

• How can a Japanese automotive technique help you to improve your business profits?
• What are the stages of lean management and how can this benefit your business planning?
• What are the typical areas of waste on a dairy farm?
• How to create capacity and time to allow you to increase profits, or spend more time with your family!
• How to get more buy-in and involvement from your staff and why this is important
• How to implement end to end business mapping, process mapping and waste walks on your farm.
• How to start creating ‘Action Plans’ and visual management boards

About Neil Fedden

Neil, Managing Director of Fedden USP, specialises in the application of Lean and Continuous Improvement into Retail, MoD, Local Government, Finance, Agriculture, Horticulture, Manufacturing, Engineering and Process Industries.

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