Oct/Nov 2006

S&A Produce, one of Europe's largest strawberry producers, has been using a mobile solution to collect data directly from the field during this year's picking season. The solution incorporates Pick-it software from Insight IT, plus mprodigy, the enterprise mobile management suite from B2M Solutions.

About two thirds of S&A's peak-season staff are migrant workers, mostly students from eastern Europe, and it says it wanted a system that would enable it to keep comprehensive records on them all (for instance, passport and visa details), as well as the ability to gather and coordinate production information quickly from source.

Each team of S&A strawberry pickers is now equipped with one of 90 ruggedised handheld devices managed by mprodigy and running the Pick-it application. They also have a portable weighing station set up at the side of the field. As students weigh their pickings, the mobile device records the weight and is used to scan the barcode on the picker's identification tag, together with the tray's unique barcode.

This information is sent automatically from the device to the data centre in Hereford, using mprodigy's GPRS capability.