Productivity advances in a road transport cane delivery system

New South Wales Sugar Milling Co-operative Limited has produced substantial productivity and efficiency improvements in its road transport cane delivery system by integrating field telemetry, automatic just-in-time transport scheduling and automated cane weighing and receival systems that are both flexible and robust. A paradigm shift in cane transport has occurred. The traditional yard stock has disappeared and the cane supply line has gone right back to harvesting. This has resulted in more effective utilisation of harvesting capital, minimised truck operating costs and lower capital investment in cane bins while providing a continuous fresh supply of cane to the mill. This paper covers the final stages made towards a fully automated weighbridge and cane traffic scheduling system at Harwood and Con dong mills. For the 1998 season, two issues were addressed to achieve objectives. These were automatic transfer of field data to the factory using a telemetry system, and automatic cane traffic scheduling. Both have been successfully implemented at Condong and Harwood mills. The developments have allowed the weighbridge to run unattended overnight, automatically matching field data with juice analysis and issuing transport trips.