DairyLift farm course trial to be extended

DairyLift tutor Clinton Yeats (left), of Auckland,  and Venture Southland business projects co...
DairyLift tutor Clinton Yeats (left), of Auckland, and Venture Southland business projects co ordinator Scott Whyte look over paperwork at a DairyLift seminar in Winton last week. Continued
A Southland-devised course giving cash strapped dairy farmers practical advice on how to improve farm processes and finances is to be extended to other parts of the country.

The course, trialled by Southland economic development agency Venture Southland in 2013, was modified this year in a joint venture with DairyNZ and renamed DairyLift.

The first class of dairy farmers and staff from 10 companies completed the course on Wednesday last week.

Led by Auckland lean business consultant Clinton Yeats, a veteran of 18 years in the Japanese automotive industry, the course shows farmers and their staff how to reduce waste and boost on farm productivity.

Participants attend 11 sessions over several weeks, completing ''homework'' in between.

Mr Yeats said the programme was ''basically common sense'' and encouraged farmers and their staff to work together to analyse on farm practices, eliminate practices which did not add value and strengthen those that did.

Business owners and managers all believed they were ''busy'' and did not have the time to make significant changes in their businesses, he said.

''People are more comfortable with what they know and are reluctant to change, even when they know it isn't working ... [But] when you define what the value of doing something is and eliminate the things you are doing which don't add value, it is almost a life changing experience.

Planning processes properly meant those processes had less chance of being slowed down or derailed by staff inconsistencies, he said.

''The idea is to have processes quality controlled every step of the way.''

Participants were also encouraged to physically ''declutter'' their work places, he said.

Mr Yeats also leads similar courses for business owners in the manufacturing sector and said he had visited too many workplaces where it took 30 minutes to find the tool needed to do the job. Farms were no different, he said.

Participants in the DairyLift course were urged to clear out rubbish, make an inventory of what equipment they wanted to keep and create clearly labelled places to keep the equipment.

''It's like your mother used to tell you _ a place for everything and everything in its place,'' Mr Yeats said.

At the start of the courses, participants were often sceptical that simple changes could make a difference to their businesses, and to the the wellbeing of their staff, he said.

He said it could take up to three months ''for the lights to go on'' and for participants to act on what they had heard on day one of the course.

DairyNZ has appointed dairy industry specialist Sarah Watson, of Christchurch, to develop the programme for national implementation over the coming years.

Mrs Watson, who was in Winton on Wednesday, said DairyLift had ''real potential'' to deliver improved business efficiencies for dairy farmers.

Programmes would be run in Canterbury and Waikato initially before being introduced elsewhere.

-allison.beckham@odt.co.nz

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