Dolphin Bay’s Pro-Treat digital treatment book has received a firm stamp of approval from operators – the people using it all day, every day.
Pro-Treat allows operators precise control over every step of the treatment cycle, ensuring that the timber is correctly treated to the exact retention and penetration requirements. It also offers data monitoring on each process during the cycle, enabling plant managers to keep tabs on the treatment process from different desktops or even a mobile phone.
After a brief on-boarding period, many of our clients’ plant operators are now using Pro-Treat in their day-to-day work. And the impact has been immediate.
“I’ve been using Pro-Treat for two weeks now, and it’s going very well,” said Sarah Machubene, an operator at Khulani Timber in Limpopo. “It was easy to learn. After less than two days of training I was ready to use it. And I can already see a lot of differences. Pro-Treat does my calculations, so it doesn’t consume my time – unlike before when I had to write everything out by hand and do the calculations using a calculator. With Pro-Treat it’s straightforward. And it makes my work so well organised, too!”
“You can see everything on the dashboard and if you make a mistake you can easily see where you have to rectify it. The information is all there in front of you.”
All the plant operators we spoke to commented positively on the switch from their previous systems, which often involved pen and paper calculations, to Pro-Treat’s digital system. “It makes my job easier because it corrects me if I’ve made a mistake from the charge book,” said Dennis Bulunga, an operator at Brondal Treated Timbers near Nelspruit. “The system lets me know if things are not 100% right.”
Johannes Juries, an operator at Treats of Knysna, pointed to the Pro-Treat Dashboard as his favourite aspect of the new system. “You can see everything there,” he said. “Your retention levels, if you’re going over or under… You can punch the information in very easily, and if you make a mistake, you can easily see where you should rectify it. The information is all there in front of you.”
Gerrie Malema, an operator at Grand Timber in Limpopo Province, agrees. “Pro-Treat has definitely made things easier for me,” he said. “There’s no longer any need to write in the book, no more making calculations by hand… Pro-Treat does the calculations, everything, and tells me what to do. Before, there were a lot of messy calculations, and sometimes my calculator wouldn’t work like I wanted it to, so there would be mistakes. Pro-Treat makes it all easier and neater. I used to spend a lot of my time in the office calculating the chemical levels, but now I don’t have to. It’s fantastic.”
That digitisation of every calculation is central to Pro-Treat. “The idea was to move the plants to a completely computerised set-up, where all calculations are done online and the plant managers have their fingers on the pulse,” said Dolphin Bay’s Wayne Driemeyer. “There aren’t many industries that are still using pencil, paper, and pocket calculators – so in that regard, our timber treatment industry has lagged behind a bit. We’re very happy to help our clients move to a more efficient and modern system.”
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for me to build my professional skills.”
Esther Gabisile Mabusa, an operator at MTO’s Pull Scar pole plant in White River, Mpumalanga, echoed that. “Pro-Treat makes life easier for us as operators, and from what I’ve experienced, it also helps the plant managers,” she said. “Wherever they are, they can access the system and check the operator’s work, without physically having to go to the plant and open the books.”
Esther also highlighted the skills development aspect of the Pro-Treat rollout. “It’s been a wonderful opportunity for me to build my professional skills,” she said. “I would like to thank MTO for recognising me and giving me the opportunity to work with Pro-Treat.”
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