The development and application of a schedule evaluation tool for a road-based harvest/transport system at Maryborough
By McWhinney, W; Haywood, R
A computer model, representing 24 hours of operation for the harvest/transport and cane receival systems, has been developed to allow the rapid evaluation of sets of harvesting and transport schedules at Maryborough mill. The model predicts the queue length at the cane tipping station for a given set of harvesting and transport schedules operating on a maximum of 50 active nodes. Iteration of the schedules by the factory's transport staff allows a relatively quick resolution of schedule details to produce an acceptable queue length profile for the 24-hour period. The principal use of the tool is to evaluate various combinations of harvesting and the associated transport in advance of the season's operations so that difficult combinations can be detected and resolved.