Browsing by Subject "Agrarholdings"

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Implementierung und Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse automatischer Datenerfassungssysteme in russischen Agrarholdings
(2009) Andres, Silvia; Zeddies, Jürgen
After the breakdown of the Soviet Union the agricultural sector of Russia kept being dominated by large scale farms. Due to the appearance of agroholdings since 1998 this trend towards large scale farming even increased. A typical agroholding cultivates several hundred thousands of hectares on a set of numerous farms, scattered over different regions of Russia. The investors originate from the up- and downstream sectors of agriculture as well as from branches not related to agriculture. These enterprises mostly have their head offices based in Moscow. Decisions regarding investments, purchase and sales as well as production planning are centrally being made here. For an efficient management of enterprises of this size the use of information systems for decision support is indispensable. Management information systems for agriculture are less developed and have less functions than the ones developed for industrial enterprises. To realize accurate acquisition of highly resolved production data in agriculture automatic process data acquisition can be applied. Automatic process data acquisition stores data of the machinery use detailed and error-free and creates a reference to time and position for every dataset using GPS. In combination with wireless data transfer these data acquisition systems provide a unique possibility for real-time control of machinery use. Data have been collected in two agroholdings. The actual information and communication routines for documentation of the field works have been analyzed. Two systems for automatic process data acquisition have been used and evaluated. The results of the evaluation of the information systems presently implemented showed for both companies that they do not fulfill the demanded requirements for real-time availability of reliable analysis and reports. The primary documentation of field works is done exclusively on paper sheets. Further data are being processed either manually or electronically. This way of data acquisition and processing is highly susceptible to errors and easy to manipulate. Necessary information is often not available in time and not adapted to the information needs of the managers. Two systems for automatic process data acquisition to collect machinery usage data have been used on farms belonging to one of the two agroholdings: Claas-Telematics on 49 combines of the type Lexion 570 and the machinery manufacturer independent data acquisition system ODOKUS on 3 tractors. Strategies for implementation of Claas-Telematics as well as reports adapted to the needs within the specific structure of an agroholding are presented. It was necessary to create a special reporting system in order to aggregate the detailed data that are provided for every single machine to a higher level and to present meaningful key figures to the management. The weak points in the production process ?harvest? have been determined for every farm individually. The results showed that in average 1.5 - 2 hours of idle times occurred per day and machine, which could have been avoided by improved harvest organization. It could be proved that the maximum combining capacity has been used completely by only a few machines. The average wheat throughput of the combine fleet was 18,7 t/h - 30 % less than the maximum measured throughput of 26,5 t/h. The best farms considering different factors influencing high harvest productivity were determined through internal benchmarking. The manufacturer independent data acquisition system ODOKUS has been used for determining the work efficiency as well as the productivity of seeding tractors. An interface to a FMIS is already realized, thus it enables the user to perform automatized field specific data allocation and offers a possibility for complete documentation of all work processes. The analysis of work efficiency showed big differences between the three farms regarding idle times as well as productivity. In order to determine of cost effectiveness of the use of automatic data acquisition systems in Russian agroholdings the total costs of the system use as well as a Cost-Benefit analysis have been calculated for Telematics on farm and enterprise level. The savings caused by reduction of the number of third party combines, lower fixed costs due to higher workload of the machines and lower specific fuel consumption could lead to a net benefit of harvest costs of 4,83 ?/t or 1,56Mio. ? on enterprise level. These numbers represent 28 % of the total harvest costs. Within the company these systems are isolated due to lack of interfaces to other information systems used in the company. The next step should be the integration of both systems as well as the creation of a defined interface to the most important information system in the company - the accounting system. In particular the management of companies like Russian agroholdings can be provided with useful and meaningful information for decision support by the data acquisition systems considered.