Shiftconnector® Provides the Seeds of Efficiency for Nufarm

Founded in New Zealand/Australia over 100 years ago, Nufarm is widely recognised as a global leader in crop protection and seed technology. Its products play a vital role in ensuring the safe and steady production of food, feed, fibre, and fuels all across the world, with production facilities across Australia, the USA, the UK, France, and Austria, to name a few. 

The organisation’s site in Linz, Austria, is a particularly key for the manufacture of crop protection products. Here, over 25,000 tons of formulated products are produced every year. 

Naturally, such high throughout invites its own challenges where efficiency is concerned. With approximately 130 employees working on alternating shift patterns, plant communication was spread across multiple disparate sources, such as pen and paper and Excel spreadsheets, creating information silos that proved a hindrance to operational excellence. 

Dr. Björn Christensen, Site Manager at Nufarm Linz, explained: “It was becoming really difficult to have transparency and consistency across shift teams, departments, and tiers, as there was no real standardised method of communication – we were using paper logs and Excel sheets as well as  Microsoft Teams, without a single system that could unify all of this information. 

“This meant that if I wanted to check a particular shift log, I’d have to physically go over to the control room and dig it out, with the time spent doing so really adding up for a plant of this size. For example, if I wanted to find mission-critical information, such as the root cause of unplanned downtime, I could lose hours digging through paper logs and spreadsheets to find it. Or I could ask the foreman to do so on my behalf, consuming his hours.” 

The challenges detailed by Björn were not the only issues facing the site. The plant relied heavily on manual data entry for tasks such as shift handovers and safety walks, and teams such as production and maintenance lacked a shared view on status, meaning it wasn’t always clear when an item might be delivered, or if it was delayed. 

Fortunately, having used it in a previous role, Björn had just the solution in mind that could help unify the site’s disparate communication channels – eschbach’s Shiftconnector®. As an intelligent operations platform that could underpin all of the Linz site’s disconnected data sources, he saw how Shiftconnector® could serve as a single source of truth across the plant, offering a shared, real-time view on critical information across teams. 

Turning Data into Decisions 

Dr. Christoph Steinlechner, Production Manager at Nufarm Linz, was among the first to buy into the new technology. Speaking on the onboarding experience, he said: “I was aware that there were solutions out there to streamline operations, but I later realised during implementation that there was much more to this technology that I had initially thought. 

“For instance, one of the ways that we are actively using Shiftconnector® is to drive our continuous improvement initiatives. Employees can now write their observations and suggestions directly into the system, and direct to them to the relevant subject matter expert using the tagging functionality. Crucially, this is something our operators can feed into no matter their role or responsibility within the plant itself, ensuring a bottom-up approach.” 

With the help of eschbach’s dedicated customer success team, Nufarm Linz was able to get approximately 200 users across its production and maintenance teams onboarded over the course of a year, with the system being tailored to the unique needs of the plant. Shiftconnector®’s ‘no code’ nature also meant that Christoph could easily customise the platform himself without the need for IT or third-party support. 

Streamlining the Shopfloor 

One of the areas where Shiftconnector® has delivered significant benefits has been on shift operations, as Aldin Majlovic, Plant Manager at Nufarm Linz, noted: “Before the introduction of Shiftconnector®, we were spending up to 50 minutes preparing the shift handover. All of the necessary information had to be pulled from the relevant sources, and then physically logged into our shift logbook, which was not only time consuming, but had a greater risk of error. 

“Now, a handover can be completed in as little as fifteen minutes, with a much slimmer margin for error. This is a benefit that has been communicated back to us from across the plant – staff really see the value in this technology and what it brings.” 

According to Aldin, Shiftconnector® also forms the backbone of the plant’s daily Gemba and safety walks – another process which was previously paper-based. He continued: “Due to the size of the plant, there a number of dead zones where there is simply no Wi-Fi connection. Previously, this meant that we had to use paper for our rounds, which could invite errors and led to a lot of time copying over information – especially when you are doing three safety walks a day. 

“Now, we take our tablet with the Shiftconnector® app on it to a Gemba walk and log the information as we go in offline mode, and the system simply syncs up when we finish, with all of the data coming through as it was recorded. This is a significant improvement on our previous approach.” 

From Breakdowns to Breakthroughs 

Not only has Shiftconnector been able to increase efficiency within individual teams, but according to Björn, it has been a catalyst for cross-departmental collaboration: “With Shiftconnector®, we have a far more joined-up real-time approach between our production and maintenance teams. In the past, our repair list was managed in Microsoft Excel, with all its limitations.”  

“Now, Shiftconnector® also offers us the historic log of all incidents and breakdowns, with a shared view between all teams. We can see when an asset was flagged for repair and who by, and then the maintenance team can provide delivery a date on when it will be fixed. This also helps us to identify trends around what equipment is failing most often and why, and then take action from there.” 

Despite the plethora of benefits that Shiftconnector® has already brought to Nufarm’s Linz site, Björn believes that even greater advantages are yet to be realised within the plant. On future plans for the technology, he added: “Shiftconnector® really is the information and collaboration platform for everything. While we are already using it as the basis for our morning meetings, I think that everyone across the plant agrees that there is enormous scope for it to be applied more widely. 

“What we have in our hands is a repository for years to come. As time goes on, we will build up a rich bank of plant data that will be able to tap into for the purposes of improving OEE and driving continuous improvement.” 

Find out more about Nufarm Linz. 

Find out more about Shiftconnector®.