CanePro is an agricultural information management and decision support system developed specifically for large commercial sugarcane growing operations.

CanePro provides the tools required by estate management to make informed operational decisions, and the necessary control mechanisms to plan and monitor performance, resource utilization and outcomes of the entire operation.

CanePro combines detailed decision-support functionality e.g. harvest planning and irrigation scheduling with a user-friendly windows application. Emphasis is on graphical reporting – interactive tables, graphs and GIS.

CanePro is modular allowing the user to license relevant modules as required.

CanePro is targeted at large commercial sugarcane estates. Typically decisions on agricultural information systems are made by the Agricultural Manger with input from the IT Manager

Increasing Revenue through:

Improved Agricultural Decision Making
CanePro’s powerful graphical reporting features will allow management to identify promising trends and make informed agricultural decisions e.g. variety selection, appraise manager performance etc.
Increased Yields through Harvest and Replant Planning
Improve sucrose yields using CanePro’s harvest and replant planners by optimizing harvest sequence to take advantage of seasonal quality and age trends.

Tailored Resource Applications
Accurately match agronomic resource requirements using CanePro’s expert planning tools e.g. develop field-specific fertilizer recommendations to meet soil thresholds.

Operational Control of Critical Operations
Plan and control the timing of critical operations e.g. fertilizer, ripener or irrigation events. CanePro’s operational planning and control functionality will allow management to identify critical tasks and monitor their execution (timing and resource utilization).
Improved Yields through better Irrigation Management and Control
Improve the distribution and timing of irrigation events to reduce water stress and increase yields. Manage the irrigation supply network to best match demand within the constraints of the supply network.

Reduced Costs through:

Transparency and Controls
Improve the reliability and control of labour capture through CanePro’s security and database auditing functionality. Reduce the opportunity for fraudulent transactions and place responsibility for data sign-off on immediate superiors.

Reduced Resource Utilization
Reduce resource utilization through accurate resource planning.

Control of physicals
The resource planning and budgeting modules would allow senior management to track resource utilization and pinpoint areas where savings can be made. CanePro’s budgeting module would allow management to constantly monitor actual resources utilization and costs incurred versus budgeted resources and costs.

What-if Analyses
Determine best practice using CanePro’s scenario-based resource planning functionality. Compare management scenarios and evaluate their effect on resource utilization and cost.

Staffing Costs
With all reports being generated from primary data, fewer data capture clerks would be required, allowing for more productive use of their time. Data capture clerks would no longer be required to aggregate and summarise data.
Management would no longer have to spend time waiting for and compiling reports. Management would be able to generate reports directly from CanePro.

Other Benefits

Central Company database
By sharing master tables between departments, data capturing and reporting errors are reduced and operational mistakes can be avoided. For example, if the harvesting manager changes the order in which a block is harvested, the ripening manager will immediately see this change and adjust his ripening schedule accordingly.
A centralized database would give management an integrated picture of the entire operation, at any level in the operational hierarchy.

Continuity
Employees come and go. If their knowledge and data is secured in a company database, their work is not lost to their successors.

Information Integration
There are enormous advantages to having one integrated package, where data is shared between different departments. For example, changes to the field master table by the Field department would become instantly visible to the harvest planning operation.

Sharing of Technology and Ideas
SQR Software works with estates in different parts of the world. We incorporate the best of their management methods and technologies into CanePro.
Cheaper than Buying Individual Modules or Developing In-house Software
Purchasing comparable modules (if they are available) from multiple vendors would be considerably more expensive than investing in CanePro and not give you the same level of integration. Developing the same functionality “in-house” would be more expensive and difficult to maintain.

Database Security
Access to information in CanePro is controlled through secure logins and database roles. A user’s login, based on their role, is linked to an authorization profile which determines data access and tasks they can perform. For example, only somebody with a HR Records Editor database role can change an employee’s salary.

Benchmarking
Capturing all agricultural-related information into a single system simplifies benchmarking between estates/divisions. Benchmarking yield and production standards between production units allows senior management to identify problem areas and poor management.

Activity Costing
The entire company could standardize on a fixed set of employee and vehicle activities. This would allow comparative activity costing between the different estates and divisions.

Data Accuracy and Reduced Input Errors
CanePro has the ability to screen data for abnormal entries. For example, it is impossible to enter in sucrose percentages that do not fall within a user defined range.

Characteristics of Canepro

CanePro is modular allowing clients to purchase the specific functionality suited to their operation.

Field Records, Deliveries and Estimates
Define a tree encapsulating the hierarchical structure of the estate. This tree is used to group data by the various levels in the estate hierarchy when reporting.

Define up to four levels of activities.
Keep detailed field and field history records. There is no restriction on the number of records, past or future.
Record detailed information about each delivery consignment. Fields’ yield statistics are calculated automatically from these deliveries.
Detailed tabular and graphical reporting.
Store and report Agronomic data as required (e.g. soil and leaf test data, Pest and Disease data).

Harvest and Replant Planning
Generate harvest dates and yield estimates using a mill demand/field supply algorithm.
Optimize field harvest sequence using a knowledge of sugarcane physiology.

Meteorology
Detailed hourly and/or daily weather data can be recorded from automatic weather stations or entered manually.

Irrigation scheduling
Detailed Irrigation Scheduling module based on the Penman-Monteith evaporation estimate and a soil water balance.
The irrigation scheduler also calculates the dry-off dates for each field.
Schedule future irrigation events and water orders.

GIS (ESRI license required per concurrent GIS user)
Integrated ESRI-based solution.
Access to the entire CanePro database.
Complete CAD functionality if required.
Resource Capture
Labour capture – normal and overtime (time and attendance).
Material capture at field level.
Vehicle utilization capture.
Contractor activity capture.

HR & Payroll
Maintain detailed personnel records.
Maintain contracts for each employee.
Update sick leave and leave balances on a daily basis.
Calculate tax.
Customizable incomes and deductions.
Pay by activity rate, daily rate, hourly rate or fixed salary.

Fleet Management & Vehicle Utilization
Record all vehicle activities and provide utilization and availability information.
Manage fuel issues.
Provide a comprehensive workshop management system

Resource & Operational Planning
Plan agricultural activities and resource requirements.
Activities are scheduled relative to harvest and/or plant date.
Each field is attached to one or more task templates. The template specifies a series of activities that would typically take place on such a field.
Agronomically intensive operations e.g. Fertilization, are planned using expert systems aimed at capturing estate recommendations
Manage specified tasks via a Gantt chart.
Store snapshots as a budget or scenario.
Store multiple scenarios.
Analyze resource usage by field, activity, resource category and budgeting period or by aggregations of these.
Compare different scenarios visually (variance analysis or side by side).
The resource planner is used to generate a direct cost budget, with overhead costs being entered separately in the budgeting module.
Store standard costs per resource e.g. cost per man day, cost per vehicle hour, cost per ton of a material.
Analyze the budget by account code, section, activity and budgeting period.
This budgeting/planning module allows management to compare actual costs and resources used with budgeted costs and resources.

CanePro Reporting
CanePro has many standard reports which can be printed at the press of a button.
Vehicle, employee and field reports can be customized by the end user.
Most reports can be exported to Excel for further analysis.
OLAP cubes created by SQL Server Analysis Tools allow reports to query aggregated data, giving tremendous speed improvements. These cubes can also be exported into Excel as pivot tables that can be emailed to, and then browsed by people not connected directly to the database.

System requirements
CanePro is a client server application.
The CanePro database uses SQL Server 2005 which requires a Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 Server operating sytem
The CanePro users (clients) can access CanePro from Windows 2000 or Windows XP workstations as well as Windows Terminal Services (Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 Terminal Server). The executable can reside on the same server as the CanePro database.