Registration System and Load Cells Provide Insight into Picked Quantities per Employee

Dutch horticulture and tomato growing company, Meer Camp, has recently put a new registration system in place, which gives an accurate insight into the work and performance of employees. Thanks to the system, the employer gets useful information about productivity. Weighing the carts with picked tomatoes is an integral part of the job. This gives a clear count on how many tomatoes have been picked per employee, so that the employee’s pay can be better matched to the work done. The weighing of the carts is done using HBM load cells, which pass the weighed information to the administration. Meer Camp in Made, Netherlands, is a medium-sized nursery that cultivates different types of tomatoes, such as vine tomatoes. The nursery covers an area of approximately 13 hectares, of which 8 hectares comprise a greenhouse, that produces about 5 million kilos of vine tomatoes annually. When Meer Camp had to update the existing time registration system in 2016, Director Dirk-Pieter van der Meer got in contact with ProCC from Rotterdam, a young IT company that had just developed a new system. The system records all data about the employees’ work, so that the employer can get an accurate account of the hours worked and the work performed. The system uses NFC (Near Field Communication), which allows wireless exchange of information at a short distance. For the registration of activities, NFC tags are scanned with the help of smartphones, which are placed in the cash register. The mobile phones, in turn, communicate via Wi-Fi stations in the greenhouse with the financial-administrative system at the office, which collects and processes all data.

The employees of Meer Camp, especially temporary Polish workers, have access to Android smartphones for their work. At the entrance of the greenhouse, the mobile phone is scanned and starts the registration. On the smartphone, an app is installed with a drop-down menu for a series of tasks, such as picking or cutting a sheet of tomatoes. The work can be defined by the employee himself. The employee enters an activity and scans the NFC tag of the row in which he performs the work. If he changes rows or the activity, he should make the change through the app or scan the new NFC tags. If an employee is picking tomatoes, he also reports that via the app, but he also scans the NFC tag on the cart and, of course, the row he is picking. As soon as the packages are full, they are driven to the logistics department, where they are scanned and weighed on a weighing platform. This happens with load cells and electronics, which are supplied by HBM. The information of the load cells is passed directly to the online system. Because the empty weight of the carts is known, each individual employee can calculate what weight of tomatoes has been picked and how long he took to do it.

“We have provided four load cells of the HLC type, including power introduction and AED electronics, for this project. In addition, we have provided technical support for the development of the application and installation at Meer Camp,”

explains Peter van Spaandonk, Sales Manager for this project at HBM Benelux. He continues, "for us, horticulture is an interesting market, for which many applications are conceivable. For example, we have done a project where the water management in the greenhouse was monitored through the load cells. Load cells are widely used in sorting and weighing fruits and vegetables, and checking the weight of packages. For the proprietor, not only the individual weight of his products is important, but also the yield in relation to the effort put in and raw materials used. In all these cases, HBM can be an interesting provider of innovative solutions.”