Tea Plucker Management System

Customer: Kenya Tea Development Agency Limited

Customer Background:

Kenya Tea Development Agency Limited (KTDA) is managed by industry acclaimed professionals. KTDA has 53 operational tea processing factories with installed processing capacity of 780 million Kgs green leaf with an annual turnover of US $ 320million.

KTDA, listed in local stock exchange, decided to automate green leaf procurement and payment mechanism by adopting Tea Plucker Management System.

Earlier System:

A member record card issued to each grower every month. Green leaf tea brought by grower is weighed using spring balance at Green Leaf Collection Centre. The clerk records weight on member card as well as in Green Leaf receipt book.

Green Leaf is repacked in KTDA bags of 12 kgs each and transported with Deliveries Note, in specially designed trucks to factory. Green leaf received is weighed again at factory and recorded.

Details of green leaf received from growers are entered into computer system manually, from Deliveries Note and Receipt book for further processing.

Limitations of this system:

• Paper Card need to be issued every month Difficult to maintain
• Manual process multiple entries of data
• Prone to errors and mal practices
• Delay in payment to the growers
• Time consuming

Tea Plucker Management System:

Smart Tea Plucker Management System automates weighment and payment mechanism. System has been designed integrating Digital electronic weighing scale, battery operated handheld terminal, portable printer with Smart Card at its core.

Smart Tea Plucker Card is issued to registered Tea Growers with relevant details printed on plastic portion of the card as well as stored into the chip.

After quality check, green leaf bag is weighed and Smart Card is inserted into Handheld terminal. Weight is captured directly from weighing scale and stored into smart card as well as terminal. Weighment slip is printed from printer attached to terminal and issued to grower. Delivery manifest is forwarded to factory through Smart card along with truck.

At factory, truck is weighed and delivery manifest is downloaded into computer system for further processing for payment to growers.

Status:

Tea Plucker Management System has been installed piloted at Nyankoba Tea Factory and is now operational in 15 other KTDA Tea Factories.

Benefits Derived:

• Increase in productivity by 200%
• Reduction in Operational Cost
• Tangible
• Salary of data entry operator
• Lesser number of weighing clerks - Salary
• Cost of printing member record card, receipt book, delivery note, etc. Smart card has 10 years life
• Intangible
• Higher Grower satisfaction
• Accurate weighment
• Electronic transaction error free
• No scope of mal-practices
• In time payment to Grower
• MIS reports
• Existing Hardware and Software utilised
• Steam lined operation

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