1999 Volume 61 Issue 3 Pages 83-94
The scheduling algorithm named SFSW (Stochastic Farm Work Scheduling Algorithms Based on Short Range Weather Variation) developed in the previous paper was used to schedule sugarcane harvesting in the sugarcane production system of Ishigaki Island, Okinawa, Japan. Adverse effects of weather variation were transformed into two kinds of cost; cost due to inventory loss and penalty cost due to idle time of the factory. The scheduling consisted of two steps; the first step was to determine the daily amount of harvested canes, and the second step was to decide the fields to be harvested and the allocation of harvesters.
Simulation revealed that SFSW succeeded to incorporate weather factors characterized by lower expected cost compared with those of three other schedules decided heuristically. The advantage of updating the schedule was confirmed by comparing the performance of the original schedule with the daily-updated schedule.
