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DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS: A dairy farmer trains on DelPro FarmManager.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Company-X built a centralised global e-learning solution to support DeLaval staff and their dairy farming customers around the world.

ABOUT DELAVAL

DeLaval is the worldwide leader in milking equipment and solutions for dairy farmers, which make sustainable food production possible, ensuring milk quality and animal health. DeLaval solutions are used by millions of dairy farmers around the globe every day.

DeLaval was founded more than 130 years ago in Sweden when the visionary Gustaf de Laval patented the cream separator. Today, DeLaval has 4,500 employees and operates in more than 100 markets.

DeLaval, alongside Tetra Pak and Sidel, is part of the Tetra Laval Group.

THE CHALLENGES

DeLaval wanted to expand its current customer learning options. DeLaval wanted to teach its global customer base how to get the most out of its dairy farm management solutions in a sustainable efficient way and minimise travel time.

DelPro Farm Manager™ is the herd management system that centralises, processes and analyses many complex points of recorded farm data. DeLaval markets around the world were taking central DelPro Farm Manager™ training material, and localising it to their market needs to solve this.

THE SOLUTION

DeLaval International asked Company-X to build an interactive e-learning solution from the ground up to complement DelPro Farm Manager™. The solution had to be relevant to every farm model from the small European farms to the large corporate operations in China.

DeLaval formed a global team of subject matter experts who informed the project led by Company-X consultant Lance Bauerfeind, project manager Dilan Prasad and senior software developer Wonkee Kim. The project had input from more than 30 DeLaval staff in Asia Pacific, China, Europe, North America, and Latin America. The diversity and geographical spread of stakeholders added to the project’s complexity.

One challenge was keeping all of the stakeholders around the world fully informed and engaged. Company-X used the project management tool TeamWork to collaborate and define a multi-stage review process. Reviewers and approvers were chosen for each region and a new role called “DeLaval Voice” to ensure content was consistent with DeLaval style.

THE RESULTS

The DelPro Interactive E-Learning solution built by Company-X offers 64 e-learning modules that would take about four hours to complete. The content is delivered through nine separate courses including milking, feeding, health, reproduction, performance and body condition scoring. Modules are animated and narrated by an automated voice. Users can turn text prompts on or off. Teaching resources are offered for download for future use as the user progresses. Users can choose to use either the imperial or metric measurement system.

One requirement was to have the possibility to change both the text and voice within the e-learning when it is translated into other languages.

Company-X used Google Wavenet technology with Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tags to simulate the appropriate English accent, with a variety of pitch and tone to get the right mix for each region, also with a combination of male and female voices for variety. Company-X built an SSML editor tool to automate this task. This way it was easy to make any changes and to generate voice over files with minimum time.

QUOTES

“Part of the overall success of the programme was our process, developed collaboratively by Company-X and the project group. This project might not have been so successful without a mature and well-established review and collaboration process, and strong governance of that.”

DeLaval International's Lynda McDonald



Services Provided
User interface design, Web app development, Mobile app development
Technologies Used
Native Android, Microsoft Cognitive Services, RealWear ML Scripting, PHP