It’s about making a difference for livestock producers, their families and their employees. It’s about how we as an industry can do better, and ultimately, build better lives, said Ed Bahler, president of Summit Livestock Facilities in Remington, Ind.

Bahler and a newly created team within Summit are working to better understand and recognize the potential of precision technology in large-scale swine production. Their goal is that of improving the efficiency and bottom line of hog operations through better pig care and enhanced “barn culture.”

“We want to make the barn an irresistible place to work, and technology can help make that happen,” said Jon Hoek, Summit’s newly appointed director of Summit Precision Production.

In mid-May, the Summit team convened a group of global experts from inside and outside the hog industry to collaborate and explore solutions related to pig and people issue within today’s modern hog production system. Included in that group were precision farming experts from Belgium and Australia, U.S. hog producers representing approximately 810% of the nation’s sow base and precision livestock solution providers.
Feedstuffs was invited to participate in a tour of Martin Family Farms leading up to the event. It is a 10,500-sow breed-to-wean operation in Williamsport, Ind.

According to Martin Family Farms president Brian Martin, one of the greatest challenges for hog producers, taking out the human factor, is that of being able to obtain accurate data on a reliable basis. It is tough to make decisions when you can’t see the whole picture or you don’t fully trust what the numbers are telling you, he said.

Surprisingly, the U.S. pork industry performance delta between the top and bottom producers has a profit variation of up to $50 per head. This is a difference, Hoek said, that needs to be explored and narrowed in order to increase value for producers.

Hoek believes $15 to $30 per pig is being left on the table. This lost opportunity is resulting from an inability to optimize disease detection, achieve full genetic potential and effectively engage and retain employees, among other things. The Summit group has the vision of shepherding the process for hog producers with the goal of solving problems that in some cases, producers probably don’t even know that they have within their operations.

Dr. Daniel Berckmans of Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, noted that there are thousands of points in a production system that must be monitored and considered, and most of those tend to be predictable. The human/animal side of a system, however, he said, is time varied and responses are generally unpredicted.

“It is important for farmers to understand they are part of a bigger system, and that they are not just producing meat; rather, they are managing a huge system,” Berckmans said.

Hoek and Berckmans agree that while automation can be a positive thing and provide hog producers, and all livestock producers for that matter, a better lifestyle from the aspect of having more free time, employee involvement should always play a role in all production stages.

“It’s really more about realigning the system to make for a better use of labor. Basically, it’s about a reorientation of time for farmers and the replacement of some repeat mundane tasks with automation, often removing human error,” Hoek said. He noted it is also about helping the industry overcome and fix its estimated 30-40% employee turnover rate. Fast food companies have a turnover rate as high as 70-75% but somehow, someway, they continue to provide a product that is consistent no matter where its consumed in the world. Their secret, Hoek believes is a well-defined system that incorporates culture, strategy, process control by rigor and discipline. This starts with a solid onboarding program led by well-defined SOP’s (standard operating procedures) to “chalk the field.” Borrowing a quote from his friend Bryan Miles of BELAY, “The way we work may not work anymore,” Hoek said, referencing the hog industry directly.

Development of new ways to work are the heartbeat of Summit Precision Production (SPP), Hoek is suggesting a wholistic approach, the coevolution of facilities, production and people.  SPP is launching initiatives around creating value for producers.  The first is SUMMITEC, which is aimed at discovering the opportunity that truly exists on the labor side of an operation. This is a process that would start by exploring the current level of performance by teams and departments, even to the level of what tasks take what amount of time (Figure 1). From there the labor structure of an operation would be benchmarked, the culture evaluated and results provided through several deliverable solutions, including QPS (Quality Performance System).

QPS is a process control system that has been used by the Summit family of companies for two decades. It focuses on supporting discipline and rigor through process development, providing a wholistic resource for employee development and training. This tool is impactful as farms scale to multi-site and geographical enterprises, said Hoek.

Summix is a hybrid culture assessment specifically targeted to production agriculture and focused on both quantitative and qualitative assessments to define the culture at the slat level.  “Our goal is to provide a benchmark assessment for a continuous improvement process in the culture arena. We will be introducing to the marketplace a technology developed in Belgium that monitors human stress by tasks; stress is an impediment to learning,” said Hoek. “The technology is out there to measure metabolic energy use both physically and mentally as stress occurs. Combined with current assessment tools we will coalesce the data into a dashboard that gives a global perspective on the culture of that location,” he said.

Humatec, another solution, is human-assisted wean to finish.  This initiative introduces existing technology to provide visibility and automation to wean to finish. The objective is to provide the farmer/owner a dashboard that shows a summary assessment of what’s happening in the barn 24/7. “This provide the owner or operator 24-hour monitoring without physically being in the barn. This will generate a usable dashboard for predictive and real-time analytics for key performance indicators,” Hoek said.

For producers, Berckmans said the vast quantity of data associated with such assessments and program initiations can be intimidating. While this is understandable, it is critical not to allow it to impact the overall bottom line and potential for improvement that exists there.

“It is easy to say the expense of some systems or analysis is too high but one must always ask if it really is too expensive when the big picture is considered,” Berckmans said.

Likewise, no matter how good technology may be, it takes good people for its full potential to be achieved, which means employee productivity and performance are important contributors to any operation.

Greg Ludvinson, an expert from Australia in precision livestock farming, said, “In the end, it’s all about people. You have to be prepared to reward and educate them.” If your highest death loss is coming at night when no one is in the barn, find a way to get employees into the barn on a night shift. It can be done if you go about it the right way, said Ludvinson.

Berckmans said in the end it all comes down to how that pig is expending its metabolic energy. When the energy is not going to pig growth, that means it is costing the producer dollars in lost performance. When an employee is stressed and not performing well, that can negatively influence the pigs and their efficiency and growth. It is critical that it all works together in a unified system that is conducive to the well-being of the pigs and the people.

The Summit team is starting with the hog sector but sees their approach as being something that can be applied to other protein sectors longer term. When asked why a livestock building company is making such a commitment to what is going on within the barn, Bahler said it really is quite simple. “When we understand the human and pig side of the system, we’re able to better wrap a building around it for the benefit of all,” he said.