The Manager - August 2025
Operations Managers Conference: Empowering managers on dairy farms
Julie Berry
Most leaders agree that people are the greatest asset of a business. But they can also present the greatest challenges. This Manager issue features speakers and topics from Operations Managers Conference, a biennial collaboration between Cornell CALS PRO-DAIRY and the Northeast Dairy Producers Association (NEDPA). The conference brought together farm managers to network and explore management strategies around the theme of Empowering managers: Embracing diversity, consistency, and attitude for success.
Lean six sigma
Vincenzo Buonomo
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is the result of merging two continuous improvement approaches and has become a significant force within organizations in all sectors to optimize processes and drive out waste. By combining Lean with Six Sigma, organizations are achieving both speed and accuracy. Lean Six Sigma is a fact-based, data-driven method of improvement that drives customer satisfaction and bottom-line results by reducing variation, waste and cycle time where everyone in the organization is involved.
Proposing change
Vincenzo Buonomo
Of course, change is never easy and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) certainly involves change. Proposing change and getting buy-in from your team is key. Have you ever encountered resistance to change? For example, you rolled out an action plan and have been disappointed with the execution. It is important to understand that with any change, there is an internal and external component. This is why change tends to be slow moving, since transition deals with internal personal issues. A few pushback comments might include “we tried that before and it did not work” or “are you saying we are doing it wrong now,” among many others. A key law of any change is that people don’t resist change, but they resist being changed.
Budgeting and proposing operational changes to or with senior management
Jason Karszes
On more and more dairy farms every year, employees play integral roles in day-to-day operations, decision making, and problem solving. In these roles, ideas for changes to operations and for capital investments are generated. While these ideas might be quite important to the middle manager for their area, across the farm other opportunities in support of the overall priorities and mission of the farm also need to be considered.
Proposing change to the leadership of the farm, or as part of the leadership team, is typically an essential step to improve farm operations. Developing proposals in support of the change can help with identifying all the potential risks and returns and decision-making by the senior management team.
What can camera technology and artificial intelligence bring to dairies in 2025?
Miel Hostens
Camera technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are currently being hyped to the dairy industry. Companies selling these technologies promise game-changing outcomes for producers who use them. The reality, though, is more of a mixed bag.
While AI is often seen as a new breakthrough, the neural network architecture that powers the technology is over 50 years old. When it was invented, we did not have computers powerful enough to run the models. This changed when companies like Google, Meta and Amazon created vast data centers for their own needs, then started selling their computational power to others during off-times. Meanwhile, agriculture had begun to generate an abundance of data. This unique combination of money, data centers and data came together, and the current AI boom took off.
Managing livestock mortalities on the farm
Jason Oliver, Kirsten Workman, and Jean Bonhotal
All livestock managers must also have a plan to manage deadstock. In most states, carcasses must be disposed of within 48 to 72 hours, and a good plan is essential to ensure timely management. The most common strategies include rendering, incineration, burial, and composting. Each approach has different benefits, drawbacks, and management requirements, so it is important to choose the option that best fits your operation.
Changing the game on teaching strategies for effective cattle handling
Jennifer Van Os
Interacting directly with cows is a necessary part of dairy farming but leads to the risk of human injuries, which can be severe or even fatal. When cows are handled inappropriately, this decreases both their welfare and milk production and can also hurt public perception of dairy farming. We developed a serious video game, Mooving Cows™, which is like a flight simulator to practice moving cows humanely. Players of Mooving Cows take on the role of a dairy farm worker. They are expected to move cows through routine barn environments such as a freestall pen or the milking parlor.