Agribusiness

Labor shortages have proven to be a challenge in many regions as they put upward pressure on wages. Combined with this, the legislation has imposed important restrictions, which require more employees to carry out the activities of the process.

In this scenario, factors such as equipment breakdowns, lack of inputs, planning failures or lack of guidance generate waiting and waste the capacity of the teams.

This capacity is also lost due to quality problems that generate rework, that is, the need to correct what was done before.

The increase in mechanization is one of the greatest levers of labor productivity, but this factor, in addition to requiring ever-increasing investments for the acquisition of equipment, also requires better trained employees, with higher wages and, sometimes, even scarcer ones.

In addition, the introduction of more complex machines with more technology also impacts maintenance costs. Not only do parts tend to be more expensive, but also maintenance, as it must be carried out by more capable teams and, eventually, at a higher cost than traditional teams.

Despite the great advances in technology, in many operations, the human factor still has a strong impact on equipment availability. Errors in operation and maintenance activities can result in breakages that could have been avoided.

Finally, the high level of unavailability requires a greater number of machines and operators, larger maintenance teams, greater use of parts and larger replacement stocks, which increases investments in machinery and production and maintenance costs.

Mechanization and automation are great allies of the quality of agricultural operations. Satellite-guided operations and variable application of inputs, based on sensors and databases, reduce the possibility of operational failures. This reduces, as a consequence, unnecessary costs with inputs and hours of rework, improving the productivity of the land, which has an increasing cost.

However, even in the most technologically advanced environments, much information required by autonomous systems is still collected and entered manually. This is especially due to the absence of an adequate telecommunication structure in the field, which leads to the need to implement adequate logistics for collecting information from on-board computers. Failures in these collections result in failures in the operation.

In less advanced environments, this becomes much more critical, as operational failures are much more frequent – and the perception of them is later.

These types of failure increase the costs of inputs, fuel, maintenance and labor, in addition to contributing to a decrease in production and company revenues.

The most common effects of planning failures are people, equipment and vehicles stopped – when they should be working. In order to try to compensate for the downtime, costs are added to the processes, with the hiring
of more people or with overtime, in addition to extra freight and emergency purchases, for example.

Often, plans are not fulfilled due to planning failures. Among the main reasons for these errors are lack of information, late information, wrong information, misuse of information and miscalculations.

Planning failure is usually blamed on planners, but, in many cases, plans are not fulfilled due to failures in execution, which include unavailability of equipment, absenteeism, lack of inputs or errors in theirapplication, throughput of substandard operations, etc.