Real innovation
These specialist milks and colostrums are from just a small proportion of Synlait’s farms but are an important part of the company’s focus on innovation.
Innovation is one of the six pillars within Synlait Farms’ business strategy, with the others being cows, grass, people, profit and environment.
Juliet is pretty mercenary on what she is willing to call a true innovation in the business – any tool borrowed from elsewhere doesn’t count nor do good ideas unless they’re turned into actions that can harness a resource and be used to get an improved outcome for the business.
“One of the critical hurdles for any good idea to be labelled a true innovation is that it’s actually implemented and used time and time again – and in reality on the farm that can be hard work,” she says.
“It’s all about the execution to get an outcome from an innovation so we have to make sure anything we implement is clearly understood by the team, that they can see the whole picture and that it’s workable.”
One such innovation is the move to establish a separate business unit within Synlait Farms called Synlait Vets. The company had already employed its own vet, Dave Campbell, for several years. He has implemented systems as well as carried out veterinary work on some of the farms, but Juliet says they saw value in taking what they paid on veterinary fees and costs to outside providers and bringing two more vets inside the business.
Because of the scale of the businesses they estimated they could get six times more benefit to the business from the same amount of spend. That benefit comes from team training and setting up pro-active systems to prevent animal health issues rather than cost savings on drugs.
Each farm is visited by a vet every week, plans and systems such as DairyNZ’s Healthy Hoof and InCalf are implemented and monitored and training of staff is carried out regularly and frequently.
“Our vets are part of building a culture of prevention and best practice throughout the whole team. They’re there to support and train people and the feedback we get is that staff love that; they’re building their own knowledge base and skill level so they can not only operate in a way that leads to prevention but they learn to correctly treat animals too.”
That all leads to great team engagement and drives people to better performance that in turn lifts the game for their farm and the whole business, Juliet says.
The systems being implemented by the vets are backed up with an array of monitoring and data collection that, importantly, is fed back to the farm teams.
“We’ve put a lot of time into working out what data is actually really useful to collect and what can give us the best information to then act on. It’s not about gathering everything that can be captured.”
“We also have to make sure it’s accurate then we analyse it and put it into a form that’s easy to read and relevant but then just as importantly we make sure it gets back to people in a timely fashion.”
Fast feedback
There’s much more to be gained by seeing data while there’s still time to react and make a difference, she says. For instance, during spring the teams get a weekly spring animal health update that shows clinical mastitis levels, lameness, deaths, retained foetal membranes (RFM) and milk fever cases.
It’s collated for each farm and totalled for the business, and each farm gets a report that allows them to see how they compare. Benchmarking between farms helps Juliet see the big picture and also allows the farm teams to work with each other.
“We’re also now starting to build some real pictures of what’s happening in specific areas, what needs to be worked on, what’s going well and where we can look to find some of the answers we might need to lift the overall business.”
The way the industry spring rotation planner is implemented is another example of innovation adding to what’s already accepted as industry best practice. It’s a tool used to allocate specific areas to cows based on the number of cows calved and how many weeks since they calved.
“During the height of calving it can be difficult to find the time to do this accurately so we employ someone specifically for 10 weeks over calving to go out to each farm and GPS the area being grazed each week.”
That information, combined with pasture cover information, gives managers an accurate fix on what’s being allocated and where they need to make adjustments.
“It’s all about making a tool robust and making that good idea able to be used properly time and time again; but it’s also about plan, do, review, plan, do, review.”
This year Synlait Farms has body condition scored (BCS) every cow on every farm and used that information to manage cow groups through winter. Consequently they started this season with cows in great condition and are committed to record the BCS of every cow four times through the season.
“That fits under our cow pillar and already we’re seeing that information and use of it reflected in better milk production performance. What we’re watching closely now is how it’s reflected in mating performance.”
The collection, monitoring and reporting of data extends to the profit pillar with detailed reports prepared monthly for each farm and the overall business but it’s not just passed upwards.
All the farm managers share in the information.
“The managers work with our six pillars uppermost in their minds too and it just wouldn’t work if we pulled out the pillar relating to financial performance but still expected them to deliver a great outcome for our business. They have to see clearly how all of the things they do under the other pillars feed into the financials.”
Juliet says it was concerning to see people expecting to come into a business at a farm management level who weren’t able to read and analyse financial information and make use of it because they’d never been exposed to it before.
People value
While she’s extremely focused on the profit pillar she believes it’s people who have the biggest influence on any profit outcome or indeed any of the other pillars.
“People are Synlait Farms’ greatest asset although they’re not on the balance sheet. But actually the last thing we’d want to do is treat them like a number,” she says.
“People are where it starts and stops for us – if you don’t have the right people on the bus you’re going nowhere.”
As part of its human resource practice Synlait Farms runs a smart goals system whereby the goals for the specific farm are set down under each pillar alongside what Juliet calls big, hairy audacious goals or stretch targets. Next to them each staff member has their own goals with measurable, time specific targets they can influence that will in turn help the company achieve its goals relating to that pillar.
It puts everyone on the same page and very clear about what the focus is. Every quarter they’re reviewed with the staff member.
“It’s not easy to sit down and do this and come up with these measurable performance goals but it’s something we make an effort to do because otherwise how do you hold anyone to account?”
What’s gratifying is now having people apply for positions with the company as a result of referrals and even some coming back having been disillusioned by working elsewhere, Juliet says.
Earlier this year she introduced the lean thinking or Kaizen system that had its start in the Japanese car industry and has modified it for the large scale dairy operation dubbing it InSynC.
It’s all about continuous improvement and involving staff in finding ways to improve business processes, reduce wastage – whether that be cows, grass, cleaning chemicals or even people and their time. The key aim is to make the work easier, better and faster.
Define, measure, analyse, improve and control is the mantra. It’s become part of the culture.
Having senior management continuity is important to maintain and enhance the systems Synlait Farms has already implemented but opportunities outside of the company and farm manager role will always be pulling on top people.
Juliet says holding on to top managers means ensuring they feel valued and working with them to find ways to reward them and provide them with opportunities for growth. The goals of the business and the individual must be aligned so both parties win from working together.
Each person is different and has different aspirations so some will have their own cows in the herd, others are now contract milkers and one is 50:50 sharemilking a portion of the herd.
The environmental and grass pillars receive the same attention as the others in terms of monitoring, recording and staff training.
Synlait Farms benefits from the knowledge and input from Synlait’s environmental manager Lucy Bowker, who works for Synlait Milk and Synlait Farms. It’s given a high priority not only because of the importance overseas markets place on good environmental stewardship and the company’s use of the clean green image in its branding but also ensuring the right to farm continues in the current regulatory environment.
While it would be easy to look at Synlait Farms as a large scale corporate and therefore irrelevant to smaller owner-operated family farms there are salient lessons to be learned from its systems and processes.
It might not be feasible for most farmers to employ their own vets but the good use of data and monitoring as well as the emphasis on training and prevention are applicable to smaller scale, single farm operations.
Innovation too is a trait shared across the farming sector but the winning formula is all to do with Synlait’s discipline in making what are otherwise just good ideas become repeatable and able to deliver improved outcomes time and time again.
Even the dogs pay attention.
