Invest in process improvement not band-aids

Technology enables improved process management.  Process management is the antidote to common issues in the industry.  Often times producers will take steps to reduce issues by dealing with the symptoms of the problem.  For example, installing larger feed bins or bigger feeders on the site.  That can help reduce problems but won't solve and is massively more expensive than implementing process-focused technology.  Livestock farming is one of many industries that can adopt M2M / IoT systems to improve existing processes in an organized and meaningful way.

Some ways we are doing this is with:

• Feed management.  Ordering feed, tandem bin management, feed outages, and intake analysis are some ways we can impact an existing process that some producers struggle with.
• Group management.  Farmstreams app collects placements, mortalities, marketing and other customizable data entry streams. 
• Medication / antibiotic tracking.
• Environmental alerting. Water usage, temperature and air quality.
• Deeper big data analytics.

Within the industry commonly approaches to deal with issues are to go bigger.  For example, when feed bins running out of feed it is often suggested to spend the capital to upgrade to larger feed bins on the site.  When digging into the results of this investment - often results are a mixed bag.  It is nearly as common for feed to run out when larger feed bins are used as smaller ones.  Barn workers have a false sense of security with all that feed capacity on site and the bins run out even in tandem.  Or both slides are left open and both bins run open catching the worker by surprise.  It happens frequently.  If the process isn't fixed, the problem isn't fixed.

I have been at a layer facility where tandem bins 36 tons each were sitting within the line of sight of the feed mill no more than 1/2 mile away.  The bins would run empty and be waiting on feed from the mill.  

That much capacity also makes it very difficult for industries, like egg layers, who might want to change nutrition quickly to do so.  You have to go through 4 days of feed before you can change the ration when that much is on site.

More feed capacity inside the barn is another common solution to feed outages.  Without a doubt it is helpful but expensive.  It also doesn't guarantee that there are not times when feed is not flowing and that bunk is not full.  

One last comment, process improvement and band-aids come in waves.  Process improvements made today will make waves that result in even more process improvements in the future.  Band-aids work the same way, a 24 ton bin today becomes 36 tons in a few years.  You have to keep making the band-aid bigger and bigger, they don't get smaller.

Recording mortalities

The original purpose of why we created the FarmStreams mobile app was because we needed an easy way to upload daily mortalities into Grovestreams.  This was important because animal inventory was needed to run certain ratios, such as water/pig or feed/chicken.  Recording mortalities and keeping track of inventory is a task that is done today on paper or a local computer at nearly every farm.  Typically the barn worker calls or faxes in the results once a week to an office somewhere that enters them into a spreadsheet or database.

As the mobile app evolved we began adding more features that people wanted.  But its origin truly was only to give us a way to easily enter mortalities into Grovestreams for record keeping and as required for the analytics engines.

Here is how the mortalities work:

Step 1, open the app.

Step 2, click the "Mortalities" icon

Step 3, select the group the mortality occurred in, the date and enter the found / euth.

The app then uploads the data via API transfer into Grovestreams where we can do all sorts of things with it.  Some examples:

• Keep a running count of mortalities and inventory.  
• Push the data into an enterprise level system through the API Transfer
• Chart mortality %

• Chart mortality % versus budget

• Although I have not accomplished this yet it would be fairly easy to benchmark and chart each site's mortality against the entire system's mortality based upon the day/week in the turn.

• Accurately update various ratios such as: water gallons / pig with current inventory each day.

• Generate alerts from the mortality data.  For example, 
• alert when mortality goes above the budget and stays there for more than 7 consecutive days.
• alert when no mortalities are entered for 7 or more days.
• alert when more than 1% of the population is reported in a 3 day period.

I am outlining a lot of complicated reports and alerts that can be generated just to show readers the robustness of the system we have developed.  In reality, most producers just want a way to submit mortalities from their cell phone or tablet and easily view the running total online or get the data into their own enterprise level system easier or faster.  We are working on getting the running total back into the mobile app; but don't have that piece developed yet.  Stay tuned.

Dealing with Feed Interruptions

I woke up this morning and saw an email alert from a hog site that we had a feed line hung up and was running continuously in an empty state since about 2am the night before.  This is an indication of a feed interruption.  Grovestreams alerting engine has several different ways it processes alerts, which is nice because over-alerting is a big issue in remote monitoring applications.  Grovestreams has thought of this and has functions such as dwell, latency, time-filters and other factors to eliminate unwanted alerts and only gives you the ones you need.

The way our system is set up is that the gateway sends a message to Grovestreams every 15 minutes that this running empty feed line state is being met.  Upon arrival in the database, I get an email notifying me of the situation, reminding me every 15 minutes until the situation is eradicated.

This past weekend we had several issues like this.  2 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday.  It seems to happen most frequently when the tandem bins are being switched.  Indications of poor feed flow.  The barn manager believes the feed is ground to fine and doesn't flow properly.  Yours truly climbed each of the 12 feed bins on site and saw for myself feed clumping to the side of the bins and not flowing.  I even took a short youtube video to document what I was seeing in one of the bins.  In the video you can also see my high and low sensors.

One item worth noting on this issue at this site that gives me some pause before suggesting a coarser grind or a bin-beater is the solution to our feed flow issues:

1.  The bins are not being completely emptied between deliveries.  These pigs are still relatively small, 90 lbs.  Going through perhaps 2-3 tons per day per group.  The barn manager who is scared to run out of feed is ordering feed very aggressively and this has resulted in delivering feed on top of feed often.  See the chart below which represents a high and a low sensor in the bin.  100 means the bin is completely full of feed.  50 means its somewhere in the middle and 0 means feed is below the cone.  If you look at my video you can see about how it is laid out.

This shows me that since the turn started in July, one of the feed bins in the tandem set has not emptied below the cone before receiving the next order of feed.  This is potentially disrupting the nutrition plan and possibly contributing to feed flow issues.  Old feed clumps easier and doesn't flow.  Additionally, logistics issues arise when the feed in the truck doesn't fit in the bin it belongs to.  All breakdowns in the feed process which add cost.

Solutions:  

1.  Monitor feed flow issues, document what the cause is potentially include a feed flow documentation module to the mobile app.  

2.  Fix feed ordering.  Ordering feed is not an easy task for a barn manager.  There are many factors to consider and timing it correctly to fit the feed mill's schedule is not a simple task.  Going forward, having the software manage the feed ordering will improve that process a great deal.  By fully emptying the bins we can know for certain that older feed is not clogging the bin from flowing properly.  Grovestreams uses data from all types of streams - sensors, app, and software which gives us a remarkably accurate estimate of feed on site and predictions on when it may go empty.

What is a farm stream?

FarmStreams collects, stores, organizes, analyzes and displays data from livestock farms.  In our world a stream is a piece of data collected from a sensor, person or piece of software.  The data is stored in the cloud using the latest Big Data structures.  Grovestreams is a very powerful platform and analytics engine that we use to mashup the data in the cloud.  

Examples of remote sensors:

• bin level sensors to estimate feed bin level
• feed line sensors to estimate feed flowing through a flex auger
• water meters to estimate water consumption
• air temperature sensor
• humidity sensor
• CO2 sensor
• weight scales to get bird or hog weights
• door open/shut to estimate how many hours a day laborers are at the site

Example of data that can be collected from people:

• FarmStreams mobile app collects data visible by people on the site, like: 
• mortalities
• medications
• health conditions
• water (if sensors are not available)
• temperature (if sensors are not available)  
• feed bin estimates (if sensors are not available)
• customizable inputs for each operation

The app can be found here for downloading: 

       Android http://tinyurl.com/mqgskr3

       Apple http://tinyurl.com/pclejlh

Lastly, we can create streams from software, such as:

• day, week, etc. of turn
• Animal inventory and subsequently feed/animal, water/animal, cost/animal
• Estimated budget intake based on feed curve
• Weight estimates, market prediction dates
• Feed inventory and feed ordering predictions

The data platform can analyze each and every one of these streams for alert conditions for immediate action.  Totally customize-able to each producer's needs with time filters (only alert certain times of day).  Different people in an organization can receive different alerts.  Examples could include:

• feed outage, alerts site manager that the animals are not getting feed
• water / animal decreases or increases compared to previous 2, 3, 4, or 5 days.
• feed bin is empty
• temperature is too hot / cold
• many many more 

View the streams in real time, summarized by second, minute, hour, day, week, month, or turn.  Charts and graphs quickly show the data needed.  Customize-able charts and graphs provides users maximum value with their data streams.  Users with an intermediate or higher understanding of Excel of Sequel query can develop powerful real time tools in our platform.

Follow our blog!  In the coming posts we will dive into different sensors and observations from the world of animal agriculture.  We will have technical and industry experts contribute.  The internet of things has impacted many industries.  In the world of agriculture, crop agriculture more so than animal ag.  the livestock side of ag has big opportunities for improved processes by combining cloud connected sensors, data from people and software.