By McWhinney, W; Crawford, DM; Ridge, DR; Cameron, JM; Absolon, JE
A major cost component and strongly time-constrained process in the production of raw sugar is the harvesting of sugar cane and its transport from the field to the factory's cane yard. Various papers have addressed many of the factors involved; the benchmark paper by Petersen et al. (1984) examined several issues such as harvester numbers, group sizes, ownership type, excess harvesting capacity and its associated cost, haulout types and institutional factors affecting harvester performance and capacity. This paper concluded that there was under-use of harvesting capacity with large variations in machine throughput.