Carton Brothers has decided to expand their use of the Seamcor data management system, Principle Suite ™, to enable their farm supervisors to replace all paper records with real-time electronic transactions.
Carton Brothers has been working closely with Seamcor since June 2008. Up until now the system has been used in the processing plant to capture quality and compliance information including, Welfare Checks, Photo Checks, Despatch Vehicle Checks, Evisceration Checks, Glass/Perspex Breakages Checks and Despatch Product Temperature Checks. Since its implementation the company has performed 148, 638 tasks in the system as well as taking 184,336 photographs.
Carton Brothers is one of the leading producers of chicken in Ireland – best known in the for their Manor Farm Chicken brand. First established in 1775, the company today has a turnover of €168 million and is run by two brothers from the 8th generation of the Carton family, Justin and Vincent Carton. Carton Brothers are working with around 150 contracted farmers and the majority of the farmers are found in the traditional chicken farming areas of Counties Cavan & Monaghan but may also be found in counties Limerick, Meath, Louth and Down.
Many of the Farmers are at least 2nd Generation Chicken Farmers. The decision to expand the use of Principle Suite ™ was driven by the need for the company to obtain a wider spectrum of data from different sources that will enable them to react quickly to any negative trends in the growing process. This will support farmers in determining where in the process there are inefficiencies and help them to increase overall operational productivity.
Principle Suite ™ will enable the farm supervisors to increase productivity through customised mobile electronic data collection. The types of paper checks that will be replaced include; store hygiene, bird appearance, target/actual weight for chicken, mortality and temperature checks.
The farm supervisors will use rugged 3G Datalogic Elf devices; these were chosen because of their suitability for working in rough terrain.
Once the data has been collected, the device will transmit the data via a secure 3G connection to the main Principle Suite ™ database in real-time. Email alerts are then sent automatically to allow farm supervisors to make decisions immediately based on photographic evidence about any non-conformances. Justin Carton, Director of Carton Brothers said, “Since 2008 when we introduced Principle Suite ™ into our business we were very impressed by how quickly it improved quality and reduced costs. The success of the system has prompted us to roll out the system to our farm supervisors to enhance our existing processes.”
JJ Kotze, Managing Director of Seamcor said, “We are excited to be working alongside Carton Brothers to extend the use of the system to their farm supervisors. Principle Suite ™ in the past has delivered excellent results and we look forward to continuing our partnership in the future.”
For further information about Seamcor please contact JJ Kotze on j.kotze@seamcor.com.