Digital Transformation of the Orchid Farms in Taiwan
These export-grade flowers provide a high revenue per hectare compared to other agricultural goods. Thus, ensuring a high yield is crucial for the profitability of the greenhouses.
Taiwan’s Floriculture Industry value reached USD 590 Billon in 2017 (Taiwan Today 2018–11–01). Orchids are exported to the EU, Japan, the U.S., and Australia. Taiwan became the first country in the world to export dendrobium plant cultivars to the U.S. in 2018. The growing demand has forced horticulture to pursue new techniques to increase their flower yields.
Problem
There is over 25,000+ type of orchids requiring their special type of care. Orchid flowers need precise temperature, humidity, moisture, PH levels, water quality, and light. Dendrobium orchid required different temperature for day and night. It may vary up to 15ºC depending on the species of orchid. They are also highly sensitive to ethylene production. Causing floriculturist to spend large amounts of time and money monitoring the conditions of the greenhouses.
Orchid nurseries/greenhouses require a high initial CAPEX to set up. There are three types of greenhouses, as shown in the table below. Most floriculturists opt for a Medium cost greenhouse as they require medium-level maintained both technical and manpower.
Fully automated greenhouses are not as popular in Taiwan due to their high costs, complicated maintenance, and setup.
Solution
Digital transforming medium and high-cost greenhouses shouldn’t be complicated. To ensure a successful digital transformation the solution must meet the following criteria:
- The solution must meet the users’ digital technology skills.
- The solution must be easy to maintain by the user requiring a low level of specialized technicians.
- The solution fills in the gap between information delivery and impact in internal standard procedures.
- The solution empowers the users.
For this digital transformation, the TEMPHAWK solution was chosen as it fulfilled the requirements.
Meeting the user’s digital technology skills
Floriculturists can use the solution if they are familiar with standard smartphone Apps such as Line and WhatsApp. When a new farmhand joins the manager needs to spend less than 20 minutes training the employee in the solution. They can deploy over 5 hectares of greenhouses in less than 6 hours. On average 1 hectare can have around 100,000 plants.
Easy to use and maintain
With a cloud base analytics, floriculturists can get their required information on the go at the palm of their hands. They only need to charge the devices once every 12 months.
Fill in the gap between information delivery and impact internal standard procedures
The TEMPHAWK provides preventive alarms for monitoring and maintaining the environment between 2ºC and 10ºC. These alarms can be incorporated into the internal SOP for monitoring the day and night time temperature for different types of orchids.
Empower the users
We define empowerment as giving a group of users more freedom and power to perform various duties. Through the digital transformation, the greenhouse owners were able to get OPEX reduction: over 36,000 USD per year were saved in quality assurance inspection and reporting, as well as the loss of products.
What is TEMPHAWK?
TEMPHAWK is the leading total solution that streamlines the perishable goods value chain process through a combination of high-tech tools and cloud-based AI. It combines a high-end sensor system with data analytics to help business owners understand and improve their production.
More information
More articles on the impact of temperature in the supply chain
- Cold Chain is Growing: Improving food safety in the warehouses
- Here is how a pork farm obtained visibility from farm to last mile delivery and impacted its CAPEX.
Learn More about TEMPHAWK (www.temphawk.net)
