Analyzing an emergency maintenance system in the agriculture stage of a Brazilian sugarcane mill using an approximate hypercube method

• Published in: Computers and electronics in agriculture Vol. 151; pp. 441 - 452
• Main Authors: Rodrigues, Lásara Fabrícia, Morabito, Reinaldo, Chiyoshi, Fernando Y., Iannoni, Ana Paula, Saydam, Cem
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.08.2018; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Agricultural practices; Agriculture; Approximate hypercube queuing method; Emergency maintenance service; Extensions of the hypercube model; Hypercubes; Queues; Queuing; Sugar industry; Sugarcane; Sugarcane industry; Travel time; Brazil; Sugarcane industry; Emergency maintenance service; Extensions of the hypercube model; Approximate hypercube queuing method
• ISSN: 0168-1699; 1872-7107
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compag.2018.06.023

•This paper deals with an emergency maintenance system in the sugarcane industry.•A hypercube queuing method is presented for the analysis of the agricultural stage.•A case study was conducted in an existing Brazilian sugar and alcohol mill.•Results show that the method is an efficient way to investigate system configuration.•The method might be useful in larger applications and/or similar agro-industries. In this paper, we present and apply an approximate hypercube queuing method to analyze an emergency maintenance system within the agricultural stage of Brazil’s sugarcane industry. We incorporate differentiated service rates in the approximate hypercube method to deal with significant travel times as well as partial backup and priority in queue to mimic the dispatch policies of the system. We then applied this method using data from a case study conducted in an existing sugar and alcohol mill. We also investigated an alternative scenario for this system, as proposed by the company‘s managers, whereby the number of servers increases. The results showed that the method is an efficient way to investigate the original configuration as well as an alternative scenario for the case study. Furthermore, the method might be useful in larger applications and/or similar agro-industries.