EVALUATION OF COMBINE HARVESTERS FLEET MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Combine harvesters play a crucial role in grain harvest. Due to seasonal character of work of these machines is necessary to achieve high standard in durability and reliability during working period. There is lots of requirements that have to be done according to the crop type, field conditions and as well as high performance and lower costs. Combine harvesters are the main harvesting technology of cereals in the world and main piece of work should be done in short time. The aim of this paper is an economic analysis of combine harvester’s fleet in different working conditions. The evaluation is based on exact costs analysis of combine harvesters New Holland brand sort by different ages and different concepts of threshing. Used data were collected during all working seasons of combines. There is a data set from 10 seasons. There is two groups in evaluation - 9 machines NH CR 9080 and another 9 machines NH CX 8080. Working parameters evaluated are fuel consumption and operational costs. Thanks to on board computer we have data about performance of each machine per day and per whole season. Costs are calculated as fixed and variable and then summarized for every machine. The result shows that effect of costs analysis depends on annual performance of the machine. There is positive effect on depressing fixed cost due to higher performance in season. A special result of this study is evidence of intervenes reason during all seasons and setting up the coefficient of repairs for the group of combines.

Keywords: Combine harvesters, cost, performance

 Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2017.149