Control of Crop Harvesting and Transport Process by Kanban Mechanism

ABSTRACT

Crop harvesting processes involve a number of interconnected logistical actives between different functional units. Delays are often experienced due to bad cooperation between heterogeneous cooperating machines. In order to increase the degree of coordination between harvesters and tractors, and eliminate non-value-adding wastes from such logistics processes, in this paper, a theoretical approach to the representation of how to build an agricultural field logistics control system with Kanban technique for crop harvesting operations has been presented. By aggregating crop harvesting and transport process into different stages, a single-stage Kanban control system for crop harvesting operations can be built under the JIT philosophy. It has been shown that the Kanban technique can be introduced to improve this type of transport logistics process. This will provide insights for the enhanced management of field logistics systems.

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