By ROD HINSCHEN, KEVIN GREENWOOD and ARTHUR PINKNEY
A SIDING booking system has been developed to allocate cane railway sidings to
harvesting contractors. The system was developed over several years and
Proserpine Sugar Mill has been using this system since 2001. The siding
booking system is a web application and includes a rule-based expert system.
Both harvesting contractors and mill personnel can access this system to view
and make siding bookings. The expert system is used to determine if proposed
bookings meet the relevant guidelines.