An international conference on scrum technologies was held during the Scrum Day in Fiederlstadt, Germany, between 16th and 17th June.
In the business world, the term scrum refers to those small work groups who operate to develop a product in contact with clients and final users.
CEO Volkmar Denner took part for Bosch – global supplier of technologies and services – to talk about asparagus.
The process was adopted with the help of researchers for the creation of a technological solution to grow white asparagus in just three weeks.
A quick operation due to the short season (from April to June) of these vegetables. "Developments like these ones make sense especially if the technology or solutions cannot be planned beforehand or if the demand for a new product is destined to change over time. These methods made us quicker and more flexible."
The system is based on a series of sensors inserted at different depths in the soil and connected to transmit information concerning soil temperature. The parameters collected by the sensors are then sent to a box from where they are transmitted to a cloud platform on Bosch's IoT suite and forwarded to the growers' smartphones.
A very useful tool to monitor temperature variation, an essential factor for the 'optimal growth' of asparagus.
The ideal temperature for white asparagus hovers between 18 and 22°C - a range which producers usually obtain by covering the asparagus with plastic films, which in turn force them to constantly monitor the weather forecast. Bosch's monitoring system has proven it can facilitate cultivation.
The various teams focused on different tasks such as wireless connection, programming of the app, identification of growers with which to test it, cloud adaptation. The first two systems were completed after only three weeks. Asparagus growers were therefore provided with a solution that enabled them to receive 'precise information' regarding soil temperature throughout the day on their smartphones.
Bosch is very pleased with what it has achieved and has therefore decided to commercialise the system, as it can also be employed for various other crop.