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Figure 2.10
GPS harvester tracks in a harvested field, coloured by speed (Beattie and Crossley
2006)
An integrated harvester performance and monitoring management system offers the sugar industry
significant improvements over existing harvest and transport operations. Technologies have already
been implemented in a number of mill areas such as Mackay Sugar and NSW Sugar Milling Cooperative
to enhance operations and add value to harvest and transport management.
Mallee System
A future mallee system will require all available technological capacity to achieve the essential levels
of efficiency required with a dispersed low value resource. The experience of sugar will play an
important role in this, with the principal area of concern being the logistics in the field over short
time periods.
While the critical cut to crush factor of sugar cane will not exist and while it is possible to add
storage into the transport at a marginal capital cost through more bins, management of road transport
must be fully integrated into the harvest system. Ideally infield haulouts, filled directly from the
harvester, take either bins or trailers to the nearest trafficable road and leave them there, pick up an
empty container and return to the field. Road transport would take these bins to the factory and
return them in a timely fashion. Given the dispersed layout of mallee paddocks where haulout
distances will vary from metres to kilometres it is anticipated that a shunt truck arrangement will be
required to transfer bins from the paddock landing or field edge to a road transport landing. .
Coordinating the harvester, its accompanying haulouts and the associated shunt truck will be the most
important area for an integrated performance and monitoring system, with the objective being to
maintain high levels of harvester and haulout utilisation.
After the shunt transport operation from the paddock landing to the road transport landing, timing
will be less critical. The ex-harvester biomass is relatively stable in stockpiles for periods of a few
days, and the critical cut-to-crush factor of sugar cane will not exist. There must also be a substantial
stockpile of weeks duration at some point between the road transport and the market(s) for the
biomass. Therefore rather than having to place an equal emphasis upon harvest, haulout and road/rail
transport as in sugar, in mallee the long-haul road transport operation will be relatively easy to
manage and most of the focus will be on the infield operations.
2.5.3 Capacity Planning
Sugar System
Sugar industry schedules are difficult to arrange as there are many interdependent factors to consider.
Separate ownership within the industry’s harvesting and cane transport, growing and milling has also
meant poor integration and inefficient practices at these interfaces. A change in one part of the
system will affect other parts of the sugar supply chain causing many logistical challenges.
However, several mill regions within the Australian sugar industry are exploring opportunities to
reduce costs within their harvesting and transport system. Typical issues include reducing the number
harvesting groups, harvesting over a longer time window in a day, rationalising/upgrading transport
infrastructure, implementing harvest best practice, removing some of the inefficient practices in cane
transport such as the double handling of rail bins and achieving a better co-ordination between
harvesting and transport activities. Within the cane harvesting and transport sectors, many existing
inefficiencies are a result of excessive numbers of harvesting machines owned by harvester
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