we have sixteen greenhouses we grow in
36,000 square feet of greenhouse we grow
for this park citywide we also grow for
the zoo in the Denver Botanic Gardens we
have thirty horticulturists that help
maintain all the 40-plus parks there was
a lot of talk about the problems that
were here but there wasn't a lot of how
are we going to fix these problems and
how are we going to find those solutions
in the past it used to be people would
either be at the garage door and they
load up plants that way or they would
actually drive through the hallway and
go from one end of the greenhouse not
the other cause so many be like hey can
I place an order for two o'clock and
they'd be like let me grab a piece of
paper or let me run down to the other
side of the greenhouse you know so it
was just not organized we really talked
to all of the parks horticulturists out
in the districts we communicated a lot
to figure out where was the breakdown
happening and then we tried to really
pinpoint those solutions and start from
there so if we were disorganized on our
end
it would only slow the process down for
them we're always about improving
efficiency while we're not selling
anything the citizens of the City and
County of Denver are paying for us to do
what we're doing and ultimately they are
the customer so when I first took over
the greenhouse and started using the
Black Belt techniques and some of the
processes looking at the a3 you know the
biggest thing there was what's the
current state and and where would we
want to go so the current state for the
green house at that time was a lot of
chaos and also a lot of frustration for
people what we did was we started using
all of our doors and the way we are able
to do that is that we actually pull the
orders for them ahead of time and we
placed them at the back of the
greenhouses towards the doors and now
we're loading people from 14 doors
rather than two and they're also their
materials ready when they get here some
people would be on the north some people
can be on the south and they can get
their plants get loaded and get going to
go plant the bed we have an online kind
of ordering system so to speak like we
send an email basically that has the
beds that we're picking up and what's in
them and then we send that to them as an
excel sheet and then they're able to
pull the orders that way you can pick
your date and your hour that you're
picking up and you can pick your bed
number there so for us you know much
room for error we can just drop it right
into the spreadsheet and then we can
actually sort and find what we're doing
for each day so good organization is key
from the very beginning all the way
through we see that there's a problem we
talk about it we communicate together as
a team hey we see this it's a problem
and then we figure out a way to make it
right
if it wasn't what it is now I can't
imagine how we would operate our fellow
co-workers come in and are always very
pleased with the system and are like you
guys are so well organized and we
appreciate it we appreciate the plants
and it just goes and flows really well
it's really cool it makes it all
worthwhile in my mind that's what it's
for for other people to enjoy
you