Abstract
Ordinarily citrus orchards in Shikoku are located on a steep sloping land. Such topographical condition being suitable for production of high quality fruits demands hard works in sloping orchards because the use of farm machines is difficult. Therefore, it is advocated to construct narrow paths with 1 to 1.3m width on the sloping land and some small machines have been developed for use on the paths.
This report shows the comparison between two types of transporters carrying different numbers of containers, 6 and 10, for harvesting. They are used on a narrow path in a steep sloping orchard in order to improve the harvesting operation.
Since the harvesting operation of fruits is a complex system influenced by the capacity of the transporter, the transporting distance, and the number of workers, we applied a systems analysis method of building a computer model and simulating the operation. The model was programmed by Visual Smalltalk, which is known as an object-oriented programming environment.
The results of the computer simulation were summarized as follows.
(1) The bigger type transporter with 10 containers does not have higher efficiency than the one with 6, in case of a 20a field lot with a wide road enough for a light truck in a common sloping orchard.
(2) In the case, which requires long transportation over 100m to a light truck, the bigger type transporter gives a slightly higher efficiency.
(3) Introduction of additional labors brings a drastic reduction in harvesting time.
