Cost and service improvements in harvest/transport through optimisation modelling

The costs of moving the standing crop of cane from field to factory represent approximately 25% of the total costs of production. Any reduction in costs will have a significant impact on Australia's international competitiveness. The current management of this process has been shown to add unnecessary costs for both growers and millers. A total systems approach has been adopted to enable cost minimisation arrangements to be examined. To examine cane supply management options objectively, financial models of the whole system have been developed and tested. As it is extremely difficult to accurately determine the optimum arrangements in such a complex and interactive system, the models are mathematically optimised under the objective function of minimising the total cost of the system within a given set of system constraints. Model validation on actual data has shown that savings over current practice of up to $2.75 per tonne cane per annum are possible. There is a win-win situation for growers and millers.