.KEYWORD winery
.FLYINGHEAD PALM IN THE REAL WORLD
.TITLE Palm computers turn data into wine
.OTHER
.SUMMARY With its simple but powerful operating system, the Palm computer is an incredibly versatile tool with applications for any enterprise. Steve Niles will begin to give you an idea of the breadth of possibilities out there with this look at how a vineyard has used Palm computers to improve production of a popular brand of wine.
.AUTHOR Steve Niles
Typically when I consider the integration of Palm computing into the enterprise, I imagine a cubicle-filled corporate office with HotSync cradles on every desk. However, many of the employees at a company called Stimson Lane don’t have cubicles. Nor do they have desks. Their workplace is outdoors, among the vast rows of grapevines filling their numerous vineyards, like the one pictured in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A The vineyards of Stimson Lane aren’t your typical business environment.
Stimson Lane operates 4,500 acres of vineyards in Washington, with contracts for grapes on another 12,000 acres. The company also has vineyards in California, Europe, and soon, Australia. You might be familiar with some of their brands, such as Chateau Ste. Michelle, Columbia Crest, Snoqualmie, and Domaine Ste. Michelle, as well as Villa Mt. Eden and Conn Creek wines. Stimson Lane is one of the top ten producers of premium wines in the United States, on the list with Beringer, Mondavi, and Kendall-Jackson in terms of both quality and volume.
Eric Wylie is an agricultural engineer at Stimson Lane’s Columbia Crest vineyard in Paterson, WA. The vineyard is pictured in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B Stimson Lane’s Columbia Crest vineyard looks out over the Columbia River.
Wylie is in charge of the vineyard’s computer and data handling as well as field matters like irrigation scheduling. In fact, currently, Wylie and his team are hard at work conducting some irrigation experiments, testing a variety of strategies at various points throughout the vineyard in order to determine which method gets the best results. He found it a welcome relief to tear himself away from one of the more labor-intensive aspects of these experiments, hole digging, in order to talk to me about Stimson Lanes’ successful integration of Palm computing into their business.
.H1 Old fashioned data collection
A great tasting wine like Stimson Lanes’ Columbia Crest doesn’t come along by chance. An enormous amount of work is required to create just the right balance of growing conditions and timing in order to produce the perfect grape. Some things cannot be controlled. What the French call the terroir, the natural conditions like climate, soil, and landscape that effect the biology of the vinestock and thus the composition of the grape, cannot be changed. However, there’s an old aphorism that says, "Great wine is made in the vineyard." It’s a matter of debate, but many argue the role of the grower in the field is just as important, if not more so, than that of the winemaker.
Growers are responsible for cultivating the vines, eradicating disease, and controlling, to the best of their ability, things such as temperature and oxidation. They must perform constant inspections and evaluations and collect vast amounts of data regarding the number of buds on a vine, when the buds break, when the berries flower, and the growth stage of each vine.
The job of collecting this data at the Columbia Crest vineyard goes to Wylie’s team of three viticulturists and four technicians. When these men and women originally went out amongst the rows of vines to gather this data, they carried paper forms on clipboards, writing in their observations by hand. Around one or two o’clock in the afternoon, they’d return to the office in order to have enough time to enter their data into a Microsoft Access database before the end of the workday. There weren’t enough computers for everyone, however, so there was a constant hover pattern around the five computers with people repeatedly asking, "Are you done yet?"
Not only was this task of entering data dull and repetitive, it cut into the time the workers could spend out in the field actually collecting the data. Highly trained viticulturists were spending a good two hours per day doing simple data entry work, which wasn’t cost effective for the company or a heck of a lot of fun for the men and women doing the job.
.H1 Automating the data collection process
One of Eric Wylie’s first goals when he started with Stimson Lane back in 1990 was to automate the data collection process. Giving everyone laptops to carry out into the vineyard was clearly an absurd notion. Instead, Wylie begin by outfitting a few of the viticulturists with Apple Newtons. To this day, Wylie believes the Newton had a great operating system, but ultimately the device proved too bulky. They experimented with more dedicated systems but weren’t very happy with the result. The viticulturists and technicians at Columbia Crest saw one model of personal digital assistant after another pass through their hands until they came across Palm computers.
Powerful, effective, and relatively inexpensive, Wylie knew he had a winner. Each member of the staff–including the viticulturists and technicians, the summer interns, and the two employees in grower’s services–was outfitted with one of Palm, Inc.’s original PalmPilots. As Palm released new products, the company gradually upgraded. Today they use all varieties of Palm devices, including a couple of PalmPilot Professionals that are still in working order.
Once the hardware was chosen, Wylie sought out the best piece of software to meet the vineyard’s needs. Eventually it came down to Pumatech Software’s Satellite Forms, at http://www.pumatech.com/Satellite_Forms_Standard.html. The advantage of this particular Palm application is that it allowed the staff at Columbia Crest to work on a desktop computer to create a custom form specific to their needs. With the help of an easy-to-use Application Designer, they were able to design an appropriate user interface by dragging and dropping Satellite Forms controls. They were then able to add functionality by setting control properties, actions, and filters. Once the design was complete, the form was installed on each employee’s Palm device.
.H1 Mobile solutions bring advantages by the bushel
Now equipped with Palm devices and the Satellite Forms application, the viticulturists and technicians no longer have to return to the office early for the unpleasant task of entering all their data into Access. Instead, they can remain out in the vineyard rows, collecting more of the data vital to the success of their business. When they do return close to the end of the workday, they simply pop their Palm devices into a HotSync cradle and download all the collected information into the Access database.
Wylie noticed that because the data transfer is so easy, errors are virtually eliminated, and the work is no longer put off or neglected out of boredom. In fact, the viticulturists have been encouraged to create more field notes because the prospect of having to retype anything they enter has been removed. Another benefit is that turnaround time between data collection and data analysis has also been slashed. The growers can look at the data almost as soon as it’s collected, helping them to make better decisions as they go forward.
As far as usability is concerned, Wylie has had no complaints. Because Palm devices have no moving parts, they’ve never suffered from the dust prevalent in the air of the reclaimed desert land of south-central Washington. The team at Stimson Lane’s Columbia Crest vineyard uses Concept Kitchen’s WriteRight screen protectors to keep their Palm device screens from becoming scratched. According to Wylie, WriteRights have increased the average lifespan of a Palm device in such a rugged work environment from two weeks to two years.
Most failures, he says, can be chalked up to human error. Once in awhile a worker accidentally drops a device and runs over it with a four-wheeler. When that happens, the employee just returns to the office and pulls a spare Palm unit out of a drawer.
Equipping everyone with Palm devices has most certainly added an additional overhead cost to the business; but Wylie says, in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, each device pays for itself within ten weeks of its introduction. The devices have generally made the workers happier and life at the Columbia Crest vineyard a whole lot easier.
.H1 Total Quality Management
Because they’re so pleased, they’ve begun work on programming another application, tentatively dubbed Total Quality Management. The application will be used to evaluate the grapes at various points in the wine making process.
The first point at which the grapes are tested is when they’re initially brought in from the fields. The grapes are then crushed by presses, which split the skins and release the juice, allowing yeast activity and fermentation to begin. After being allowed to ferment for a time, the grape mass, or pomace, is taken to the presses, at which point it’s tested again. Testing will occur twice more, during the second fermentation stage (at which point the wine’s malic acid is converted into lactic acid and carbon dioxide, softening the acidity of the wine), and at the racking stage (where the wine is transferred between clean, sterile barrels, aerating it and leaving behind sediment in the old barrel).
At each of these stages, the winemakers will use their Total Quality Management Palm application to record such information as appearance, taste, and sugar content. They’ll then get this information back to the growers to give them a better means of evaluating their growing methods.
The real benefit here, says Wylie, is that it gets the wine makers and vineyard managers talking. A healthy dialogue means a healthy crop, which makes for a better product.
.H1 Lessons learned
Through this process of integrating handheld computing technology into the winemaking business, Wylie has learned some lessons that could be valuable to you if you’re attempting to integrate Palm computers into your company.
For one thing, Wylie says, people are paranoid. In a company, you stand a good chance of coming across employees ranging from those who don’t consider themselves particularly technically savvy to the virtual Luddites. They’ve probably just gotten used to a PC being an integral feature of their workplace desktop and may be reluctant to take yet another technological leap by adopting handhelds. Some may convince themselves the technology is beyond them.
However, Wylie has discovered through experience that if you spend a little time with reluctant mobile computer users, walking them through the basics, they’ll be completely at home with the device in a matter of days thanks to Palm’s simple, intuitive operating system.
Another tip he has for anyone using a database application in their business is to make copious use of pick-lists (drop-down menus). When you have to enter a piece of information into a particular field, pick-lists within the field give you a list of options from which to choose. This not only saves you the chore of writing out the response, but it also creates uniformity among the users in your company. With paper forms or blank fields, various users may adopt unique abbreviations and phrasing that could be difficult for other personnel to decipher, and it could lead to confusion in the analysis phase. With pick-lists, the responses are uniform and standardized across the board.
.BEGIN_KEEP
.H1 Conclusion
Stimson Lane’s Columbia Crest vineyard’s use of Palm devices has improved worker morale, saved time and money, improved communication, and reduced data errors. All this has, no doubt, contributed to the continued improvement in production of their excellent brand. One could say it’s a vintage example of the advantages Palm computing can have for an enterprise.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Stimson Lane, visit http://www.stimson-lane.com.
For more information on Pumatech Software’s Satellite Forms, visit http://www.pumatech.com/satforms_se.html.
For more information on Concept Kitchen’s WriteRight screen protectors, visit http://www.conceptkitchen.com.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6ec32
.END_KEEP
