Operational planning and inventory control
When I was Operations Manager at Australia's largest commercial avocado nursery, fragile spreadsheet planning was holding back growth. I rebuilt production planning and inventory tracking from the ground up, increasing production capacity by 43% while dramatically improving quality and operational control. We went from guessing at commitments to confidently delivering on them.
The problem
When I became Operations Manager at Anderson Horticulture, we were Australia's largest commercial avocado nursery but our growth was constrained by broken data systems. We had 21 staff, chronic production delays, and no real visibility into inventory or capacity.
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Critical business logic lived in the heads of a few key people. Our planning was done in spreadsheets that required manual fixes every week. When customers asked for delivery dates, we were guessing. When we made commitments, we often couldn't meet them.
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The data existed, but it was fragmented, inconsistent, and couldn't tell us what we actually needed to know: Can we deliver? When? What's our real capacity?
What I built
I rebuilt production planning and inventory tracking from the ground up. This meant:
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Creating complete inventory visibility across all growing stages
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Building realistic capacity models based on actual constraints
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Analyzing germination conditions to prevent costly disasters (one early mistake cost an estimated $300k)
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Designing a custom hothouse based on data analysis (6-month payback)
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Reconciling operational activity with financial data (caught ~$1M annually in cost leakage)
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Establishing automated reporting that reflected operational reality
The outcome
Over five years, the operation transformed:
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Production capacity increased ~43%
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Germination rates: 32% disaster → 85-92% consistent
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Invoicing errors reduced 93%
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Delivery accuracy improved 90%
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Cost leakage caught: ~$1M annually
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Team grew from 21 to 47 people
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We could confidently commit to delivery dates and actually hit them​
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The real win wasn't the metrics, it was regaining control. Staff had direction instead of firefighting. Customers received trees when promised. And management decisions were based on what the data showed was achievable, not tribal knowledge from a decade ago.