PrivAssist “drives efficiency” at Swiss grower Purnatur AG
Founded in Switzerland in 1970, grower Purnatur AG – located in the Ellikon an der Thur region – is now one of the leading Swiss producers of tomatoes. Until three years ago, however, Purnatur’s productivity was held back by a poorly structured labour and production registration system. Marco Stricker, managing director of Purnatur AG, decided to turn to Priva’s PrivAssist to provide a comprehensive and easily manageable registration solution to fully automate the company’s labour and production processes.
“We simply didn’t have any depth of insight into our labour and production”, explained Stricker. “Because we grow many different kinds of tomatoes that need different growing areas, we need to make major decisions about the way that we divide our workforce – only this
way can we measure our inputs
and outputs effectively.”
It was not Stricker’s goal to have a system in place that amounted to a ‘big brother’ watching his staff – it was merely to implement a system that would achieve a complete insight into the processes of the facility, from a top-level overview down to the smallest detail of production data. With PrivAssist, Purnatur AG achieved this complete insight within just two years.
“We used the first year as a trial, testing out the system and getting our staff used to the registration process. After this trial year, we started using the system for real, and it had an immediate positive effect on our efficiency as a company”, said Stricker.
Priva came into Purnatur AG, installed the new system and gave a comprehensive workshop to the grower’s staff on the use of the system. As with any change to established processes, Stricker explains, staff were initially unenthusiastic but, with Priva’s instruction, staff soon discovered that the system is not a difficult one to use. Sticker said: “PrivAssist is not a complicated program – in fact, it simplifies not only our top level processes in defining outputs, costings etc, but also makes life easier for our workers. The chance of getting something wrong during registration is minimal – there is little room for error, and soon our employees found themselves working the system perfectly, making our analysis of incoming data easier.”
“PrivAssist essentially gives us complete control over our labour and production”, concludes Stricker. “With this system, we had an infrastructure that allowed us the possibility to drive efficiently across the entire facility.”
