Farming systems and production management

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Development of a real time information system for Clarence harvesters : SRDC Final report CHC002
(SRDC, 2008) Rose, P; Taylor, D; Crossley, R
The Clarence Harvesting Co-operative was formed from the amalgamation of two existing harvesting co-operatives, which in the later years of the project consisted of four harvesters cutting a total of between 350,000 and 500,000 tonnes of cane each year. Soon after the formation of the co-operative the managers discovered that access to near real time information about the supply chain was required to realise the benefits of the larger harvesting operation. The required information was available but stored in separate and proprietary systems within the sugar mill. This made it difficult to access, correlate and deliver the information in a meaningful and timely manner to assist harvesting crews. A data transfer system to provide this information was conceived to integrate with a mobile phone-based consignment system planned by NSW Sugar. SRDC provided funding to allow Agtrix Pty Ltd to develop the solution, which was called SHIRT (Supply and Harvester Information in Real Time). SHIRT provided harvesting crews with valuable information about what was happening in the transport and milling operations as soon as the information was available. The data was transferred from each proprietary system in real time to a single external database. The data was then linked and merged, enabling meaningful reports to be collated and delivered to harvesting crews through a web site. Accessing the information through the web site was restricted by employing an access and authorisation process that filtered the data available to users based on their roles (grower, manager etc.), affiliation (farm, harvesting group, mill etc.) and/or their method of access (mobile, touchscreen or computer). Various devices were employed to access SHIRT including (a) a large screen mobile phone used by the supervisor of the Clarence Harvesting Co-operative, (b) touchscreens and modems fitted to either a haulout or a harvester in each crew from which the crews were able to access SHIRT and (c) the NSW Sugar web site used to distribute information to growers. Feedback from an end of season questionnaire and workshop indicated that the information being supplied to the crews was very useful for their daily management. The questionnaire completed by members of the value chain showed an increase in the level of satisfaction compared to the same questionnaire completed 4 years earlier. A couple of crews could not find anything major to complain about and so did not complete a questionnaire. SHIRT was available for use at Harwood for most of 2009 and will be introduced to the other two NSW Mills in 2010. NSW Sugar has incorporated the maintenance of SHIRT into their Service Level Agreement with Agtrix Pty Ltd, thus ensuring that it will evolve with the business and the benefits from this project will remain available to members of the value chain.
Achieving the world's best practice harvesting and transport costs for the NSW sugar industry
(2007) Beattie, P; Dines, G; Crossley, R; Prestwidge, D; Higgins, A; Laredo, L; Power, A; Sandell, G; Tickle, A
This project set out to develop innovative techniques for cane supply management within the NSW Sugar Milling Co-operative Ltd (NSWSMC), assess and promote harvester group optimisation within the NSW industry and to aim for world’s best practice harvest costs. In his independent assessment of the sugar industry Hildebrand (2002) reported that forecast prices in 2004 - 2006 would create an urgent need for productivity and cost improvements for the industry to remain internationally competitive. Hildebrand also recommended worldwide benchmarking of activities against the strongest competitors followed by implementation of cost effective options. This project concentrated on the largest cost item for cane production; harvesting, to develop innovative techniques for efficiency and cost improvement with the aim of achieving worlds' best practice harvesting costs of $4 per tonne of cane. Additionally harvest and cane supply management are significant milling costs and with the need to reduce unit costs it was essential to find ways to automate harvest management and reduce the workload for NSWSMC Cane Supply Managers at each mill. The NSW sugar industry currently has one of the most efficient cooperative harvesting arrangements and is well positioned to make additional steps to capture additional cost savings across the NSW sugar industry value chain. These economies are essential with the co-generation plans for the NSW industry. Additional costs of whole cane harvesting can be partly offset by the efficiency gains in all mill areas. The project aimed to investigate and implement whole-of-system solutions for reduced costs in the harvesting and transport sectors of the NSW Sugar industry. At the start of the project we were interested in examining scenarios involving changes to harvesting and transport, which include reduced harvesting groups, harvest best practice, optimised/rationalised loading pad locations and automated harvest management. Such changes required a different approach and this project saw excellent collaboration between organisations and agencies involved in sugar industry research and development. Initial stages of the project involved the NSWSMC and Agtrix working together for the implementation of the harvest management system, now called CHOMP. Agtrix and the NSWSMC pioneered the development of this program that is now used widely in the Australian sugar industry. Work with CSIRO and Harvesting Solutions centred on utilising modelling tools developed through other SRDC funded projects like CSE005 to optimise locations of cane loading pads in NSW and to examine efficiencies associated with harvest group amalgamations.

Farming systems and production management

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