Vitensa

How it went

Vitensa grows tomatoes and cucumbers on one site with its own foremen per section. Most workers are checked twice a week, new people more often.

Nitea provides speed, output and staffing, among other things, and that works well. For quality checks Vitensa had built its own forms with another supplier. Those were hard to adjust as soon as something changed in the crop or in the tasks. The outcome came out in a spreadsheet, so you had to go searching to see how someone was doing. In practice you did see results, but it was hard to steer.

What they were looking for

Vitensa already had the structure in place. Checks were done, there were checklists, action was taken within the same week. What was missing was sharpness: quality per worker, next to the speed that was already there through Nitea.

At the start of the pilot they named themselves where it should end up after the pilot period: a simple way of working that is the same for all foremen, and insight into quality per person.

Behind that second wish was training. Someone who keeps coming back in rechecks shouldn't just keep being checked, they need more targeted coaching. There was no system for that.

What we do now

Connected to Nitea IT and all foremen use the app. Everyone is currently checked twice a week, to get used to the new structure. Quality and speed per worker are shown in one view and the foreman gets a push notification as soon as a recheck is waiting for him or her. The checklist module is running, the tasks module is now being set up.

Enhanced checking comes directly from a feedback session with Vitensa. They raised the question of how to get someone who keeps coming back in rechecks into a training track again. Anyone who now gets multiple rechecks within a set period automatically goes under enhanced checking and gets extra coaching until the work is back on standard. Two weeks after that conversation it was running in the greenhouse.

After the pilot the licence was continued for tomatoes and cucumbers. We are now discussing the options for a bonus module.