Hello everyone! I’m Shohei.
This column is about what I felt and experienced at a plant factory in Japan.
When you’ve been in the field for over 10 years, a lot of things happen. I write freely about what I remember.
Please feel free to read it while thinking, “Wow, that’s how Japanese plant factories work.”
results of prolonged work
At that time, I had a role supporting the opening of a plant factory. I had visited the factory several times before, but an incident occurred on the day of the first harvest.
On the first harvest day, work such as trimming and packaging also began, so the workload increased compared to before.
Ideally, we should have increased the number of employees by that day and thoroughly provided work instructions.
However, that day, despite the heavy workload, we were unable to gather enough staff. Training was not complete and there were a lot of people who showed up for the first time.
In addition, the size of the harvested items was larger than expected and did not fit into the packaging bag.
As a result of these factors, the first day’s work was significantly delayed.
The packaging work was the most problematic.
In addition to the small number of staff, there was not a single person who could operate the packaging machine.
I was one of the few people who could operate the packaging machine, so I started to support the packaging work.
However, it was difficult to do the packaging work while also handling the many first-time attendees.
Furthermore, due to the mismatch between the size of the vegetables and the packaging film, the vegetables would not fit into the bag. The work was difficult even after repeated trial and error.
In the evening, the part-time staff went home, but at that point, only about half of the planned work was completed.
Since there were other tasks remaining, such as harvesting, transplanting, and cleaning, the remaining few of us divided the work and continued working all night.
I continued to do the packaging work, but even though I had come to support, I was the only one doing trimming and packaging work.
It took a long time, but we managed to finish the work by morning.
However, it was already morning and the second day started as it was.
The second day was the same situation and a lot of work remained as night fell.
We worked all night again to complete the remaining work.
I then welcomed the third day morning.
At that point, I had been packaging for about 48 hours and was already exhausted.
Even so, I couldn’t just abandon it, so I continued to work the same way in the morning.
To be honest, it seemed like a good pace compared to the first and second days.
And on the third night, having spent nearly 60 hours operating the packaging machine without leaving the factory except for the bathroom or snacks, I finally reached my limit.
I had been standing the whole time, so my legs felt so heavy as if they were not my own.
I think I went home after that, but I don’t really remember the second or third days. After three days, the other workers got used to it and everything seemed to progress smoothly.
After this incident, when supporting the opening of a new factory, I started to pay meticulous attention to staffing and training.
I had experienced firsthand the importance of crisis management in the early stages of the opening.
This column was published in a collection of know-how to improve on-site skills.
This column is included in the Plant Factory Know-How Collection below.
This know-how collection is packed with useful tips to help you increase profitability, regardless of the specifications or equipment on-site.
This is a must-read for those operating plant factories or indoor farms. Implement the know-how to increase profitability.
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