Q:
 You mentioned last week that there was a second part to the Constant Improvement theme from last week. Care to elaborate?
 

A:  Of course…. There’s a lot going on this year at DG so I thought I’d break it up into two parts. 

 Q:
  Got it. What else have you been working on improving this year?
 
 A:

Our Supply Chain and Farming Teams have been working hard on getting better visibility to the normal peaks and valleys of our harvests. At the same time, they have been working on minimizing both the unnatural peaks and valleys caused by our dear relative…”Mother Nature.”

   Q: How are they doing that?

 A: 

We’ve added a position to that team with the sole purpose of getting weekly harvest forecasts from each of our ranch managers and comparing those numbers to what we actually planted. From that point we match those numbers up to what we actually forecasted our needs to be from our clients and then project our over/under.

 Q:
 Is this working?
 

A:  It sure is. It’s not perfect because we’re not perfect but it’s a 10 fold improvement over previous methods. AND, in the spirit of constant improvement, we will keep refining and improving this forecasting process.

  Q:
What else have you done?
 

A:  Here are a few other little things that fall into the “be a little bit better today” category. We purchased and installed a new fire sprinkler system (we are in California wildfire country after all). We resealed the roof at Gringo North to protect us from the inevitable rainy season. We installed a new high speed water chiller to handle our increased wet pack volume and keep our water at a constant 36 degrees. We rebuilt 2 shipping docks so that we have 14 fully functioning truck docks at all times. We added an automated mason jar filler line to speed up the process (we are charging towards our goal of shipping 2,000,000 mason jars. 1,453,012 shipped so far, but who’s counting. Thank you Mark.) We added another automated bouquet belt to our Gringo South assembly center. We improved and streamlined our bucket cleaning process and area. We launched and changed our disposable display boxes to match the same graphics and message as our permanent in store display boxes. We launched two new sizes to our wooden box arrangement program so we now have small, medium, and large offerings to match our clients’ price point requests.

 Q:
  That’s quite list. Can we see what some of these improvements actually look like?
 

A:  Of course you can. Here you go……..

 New Permanent Display Graphics and tag Line… Grown to bring Smiles™ (Sunflowers born with a purpose).

 New Disposable Half Pallet 6 bucket Instant Impact Display with the same consistent messaging. Grown to bring Smiles™ 

  New Disposable 2 bucket Display with the same messaging (you get the drift). 

  The “big chill-er!” New Water cooling system with the capacity put 36 degree water in over 3,000 buckets a day.

 The New automated Mason Jar water-filler line.

 Smiling faces working on brining smiles as they assemble our new custom wooden box arrangements line.

 New in Flower Foam Arrangement Line 4” version of wooden box offerings.