causes of variation

     Had some time to spend with a young vet this week.  I was picking his brain about variation and its cost in pig production.  He related to me a story about a client who, while doing seemingly everything pretty well thought he was “missing one pig” (psy) and wanted this vet to “find the pig” for him. 

     He followed everyone around, observed everything from insemination techniques to farrowing and processing procedures and examined all the other practices as well as doing the prerequisite health checks etc. and didn’t find much out of order. 

So we are talking about not adding to the fundamental problems which biological production systems deal out just because of their nature. Some of those problems include seasonality, the complexity of growth mechanisms as a key variance enhancer (compared to non-biological production—like automobile manufacture etc.) and the fixed periods of production which cannot be speeded up with an extra shift (like gestation). I’m contending that the next major movement forward in competitiveness is the producer’s ability to manage (certainly never eliminate!) variation more effectively. There is lots of money on that table.