I manage a sod farm and I am running several harvesters to cut several varieties of grass. My order numbers change throughout the day as landscapers add and subtract pallets for pickup. What might start out as 40 pallets on dispatch at 6am will always climb to anywhere from 200-300 by late morning.

To update the crews in the field, it’s necessary to drive to the field and I will typically flash an updated order total from my truck window so I don’t have to stop them from harvesting. Order numbers can change several times in the course of an hour, which requires a trip to the field each time it changes.

I’d like to install something in the tractor cabs like those led or lcd black box displays you see in restaurants or the dmv for displaying order numbers. I want my harvest crews to be able to see the order numbers change in real time so they can adjust their totals. I need to be able to display a 3 digit number and update it remotely from phone or remote.

eBay and Amazon are full of cheap products I’m describing, but I want something with a better build quality. Ideally controlled via an app.

Do you all have any ideas?

Aren't you trying to recreate a cell phone? Why not just text them, assuming your site has signal.

Or are you trying to integrate into some order entry system and completely take people out of the chain from receipt to display?

I'm thinking the same as Georgeair, how is this not a cell phone application? Perhaps employing online services ala Google Docs, or Office 365 to avoid the cost of writing code. Update a hosted spreadsheet on your office computer, and the cell phones in the field that are viewing the same spreadsheet get updated immediately. Much simpler than a custom solution. Cab-mounted tablets in lieu of cell phones would work too if the data part is handled. You'd get pretty good signal propagation over clear flat fields so WiFi data may well be a viable option (a mile, or maybe two), or, perhaps, a cellular device in one vehicle accessing a commercial cellular network, and serving as a WiFi "hot spot" for the other vehicles/workers.

Using a general purpose data network gives associated capabilities, e.g. the option of voice communication within the crew and back to HQ, weather alerts, etc.

In theory that’s what it should be. In practice, this is three migrant workers on a small tractor working quickly to stack sod into palletized product. It’s a loud, fast-paced environment. They’re dirty, sweaty, and most importantly, don’t have access to cell phones.

A simple cab mounted, highly visible display to update them of new order totals will be the ideal solution.

I'll echo the others here and say Google sheets might be your solution. My girlfriend and I have a shared spreadsheet, and we can sit on the couch and see each others updates in real time as they happen. I would also bet you can make it read only for the crews out in the field so they can see the updates but can't accidentally make changes.

Mount a tablet in each tractor that is signed in and has the spreadsheet up all the time and then they don't need individual accounts or devices.

IMO, if you are successful solving the technical challenge of finding a way to display remotely-updateable numbers in the cabs, I suspect a bigger challenge as a manager will be deciding what numbers are being displayed and how often they will be updated.

I think as a manager in this environment, with what I believe you have described as temporary, unskilled workers, you should expect to continue to own the responsibility of monitoring orders and making the production quota call yourself, based on your experience and forecasting.

The operators won't be able to make sense of dynamic order numbers, and I don't expect you would be happy if they are forced to try. How are you hoping three migrant workers handle a frequently-changing sequence of numbers, say 6->200->53->79->159->? as orders come in, get modified/cancelled, etc? I would expect chaos, personally.

My suggestion, for what it's worth: Use your skills to come up with the production number using your best judgment - using whatever process you currently use to do that - and then just transmit updated production numbers to the cabs as your forecast changes, rather than driving out there each time you change the goal.

In other words, I would suggest that you don't hook the cabs up to a real-time order book, and just use the display to save your driving out when you decide on revised production goals.

How much range do you need? There are wireless number displays that have 1500 ft ranges that you could update.

How much info are you needing to show? Is it just 1 number (pallets of sod) or multiple (order number AND number of pallets)?

DC digital has items like you described in your OP, keypad not app controlled, and they are a US company (not Ebay 3rd party seller)

One of my clients builds enterprise mobile applications to your specifications for projects like this.

I'd be happy to put you in touch with them.

A

Joel9507 Wins the Internet. Clearly he has managed people.

As he said, what you need is something to save you driving out to the field, not order transparency.

A bonus might be a away for them to send questions back, but maybe not.

Total devil’s advocate but one alternative would be cheap ass cell phones with no long distance mounted in the vehicles. Call em instead of driving out, tell them what you need to.

Or...hire a foreman/crew lead who knows how to use a cell phone.

I'd bet a buck that these "three migrant workers" have more time on cell phones than most of us, and would gladly participate using their own cell phones for an extra $20 per week not to mention the prestige of being the jefe. OTOH, loss of productivity when they're talking to their mujares is no doubt a risk.

I'm not sure how to get the information to it, but would a large LED sign like this be useful?

Buy one of those machines that cuts and pallatizes the sod automatically with only one operator.

What folks are failing to understand is the three guys doing the work aren't spending their time on their phones and couldn't hear them ringing either. WiFi isn't going to cut it. The one sod farm I've been to used land leased from a gentleman on his 27,000 acre ranch. The other one was just under 1,000 acres.

Would not the guy running the loader putting the pallets on the trucks be the person to keep updated?

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
Buy one of those machines that cuts and pallatizes the sod automatically with only one operator.

Ding, ding, ding.

quote:

Would not the guy running the loader putting the pallets on the trucks be the person to keep updated?

Whoever is least busy (has time to check the phone) and is the “lead”.
If the cutters are way ahead of the loader and have six pallets done and sitting on the ground when he tells them, “Wait, stop, we don’t need any more.” That isn’t ideal.