After nearly a century milking cows by hand and manually connecting teats to milking machines, in December 2011, SwissLane Farms in Alto, Michigan, installed eight Lely milking robot units, the largest installation in the state. Prior to their robot installation, their herd was averaging 85 pounds of milk a day. One week into installation, they were experiencing average milk production of 102 pounds. By further implementing standard operating procedures and lean principles and processes, milk quality and efficiencies improved significantly.