Determination of the optimal number of trucks for harvesting grains on the example of a farm of the Poltava region

Abstract

An optimization model developed by the authors has been applied to determine the required number of cars in the harvesting and transport complex when harvesting grain for grain conditions in the Karlovsky district of the Poltava region. To determine the design parameters that depend on the conditions of the economy included in the expression for the objective function of the constructed optimization model, namely the average number of service requests per unit time and the average waiting time for each application, a calculation method has been developed. The initial data for determining these calculated parameters are combined into three groups of parameters characterizing the conditions for harvesting grain in this farm, determining the characteristics of the combine harvester, and the characteristics of the vehicle (car).
Using the methods of the theory of queuing, we found such a ratio of the number of harvesting and transport equipment as part of the harvesting and transport complex that ensures the minimum total costs (correspond to the objective function of the previously proposed model), which are caused by the downtime of combines and the cost of maintaining cars.
It was determined that the optimal number of cars obtained by the criterion of total costs in the harvesting and transport complex corresponds to their increased number in comparison with the accepted number of cars according to the calculation method. It has been established that with an increase in the number of cars, the total costs from downtime of combines and cars first decrease, and then increase.