A small printing company in Johannesburg has experienced a steady decline in profits over the past four years, and wishes to reverse this trend. The objective of this study was to assess the implementation of Lean Manufacturing in that context, and to determine the impact it had on the printing company’s profit margin. A process-mapping of the printing organization was performed; this process-m...

Abstract Vegetable farming contributes major income to farm households in the upper Citarum watershed. The participation rate of farmers vegetable reached 55%, indicating that this region’s is very intensive. However, land holding diverse among farmers. also planted on a steep slope and vulnerable soil erosion. This condition implies low technological efficiency high risk production profit. In ...

Many farmers in the developing world have limited access to agricultural technologies and markets. Mobile phone-enabled services that offer price information and market linkages could contribute towards bridging this gap by reducing uncertainty about expected profits, information asymmetries and market inefficiencies. This article uses the example of the price information and marketing service ...

Identifying opportunities to further improve pasture production on high producing, irrigated Canterbury dairy farms is complex. An innovation systems approach was used identify the factors contributing variation in a case study farm such as: soil characteristics, irrigation management, and grass grub populations. This paper focuses value proposition of managing zones optimise production. Using ...

A two-year dairy study was conducted under irrigation at Lincoln, Canterbury, comparing 1. Moderate stocking rate (MSR, 3.9 cows/ha; comparative (CSR) of 89 kg live weight (LWT)/t DM (dry matter) offered; 150 nitrogen (N) fertiliser/ha/year; grain supplementation 0.55 t DM/cow/year; wintering cows off- farm); or 2. Low (LSR, 2.9 CSR 91 LWT/t grazing diverse pasture (Italian ryegrass, plantain, ...

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become an important and essential decision support tool in agricultural products marketability. The high production cost of farms and the increasing demand for food have pushed ICT to the forefront of the food supply chain. In developing world such as Sub-Saharan African (SSA) regions where the farm profitability is generally low, efforts have ...

In this study 495 smallholder dairy farms in 52 villages of different township in southwestern province of Iran (Chaharmohal and Bakhtiari province) included 1321 lactating cows and 2811 total mature cows (lactating and dry) during winter 2009 to summer 2010 were used to estimate economic opportunities insmallholder dairy farms. Questionnaire survey was used to collect data from last year infor...

This paper presents a scalable digital learning system that can store and provide Web access to digital contents from voluntaries, teachers, and institutions that lack resources or expertise to offer classes over the Internet. We use the server-cluster architecture as a way to create scalable and highly available solutions. However, hosting a variety of contents from different owners on such a ...

linear programming has been employed in many areas of constrained optimization including in agricultural planning for a long time. one of the most important disadvantages of such a method is that there is only one optimum solution for a given objective function and constraints set. another method named nearly optimal linear programming has been developed for solving the problem. this method can...