Introduction of a New Index of Field Operations Efficiency

Abstract

The evaluation and prediction of the agricultural machinery field efficiency is essential for agricultural operations management. Field efficiency is affected by unpredictable (e.g., machine breakdowns) and stochastic (e.g., yield) factors, and thus, it is generally provided by average norms. However, the average values and ranges of the field efficiency are of limited value when a decision has to be made on the selection of the appropriate machinery system for a specific operational set up. To this end, in this paper, a new index for field operability, the field traversing efficiency (FTE), a distance-based measure, is introduced and a dedicated tool for estimation of this measure is presented. In order to show the degree of the dependence of the FTE index on the operational features, a number of 864 scenarios derived from the consideration of six sample field shapes, three conventional fieldwork patterns, four driving directions, and twelve combinations of machine unit kinematics and implement width were evaluated by the developed tool. The test results showed that variation of FTE was up to 23% in the tested scenarios when using different operational setups.