Research on losses of technical preparedness of forage harvesters combines by level of seasonal service accumulation

Abstract

The results of experimental studies are presented in article. It is established that minimal total costs for ensuring the technical preparedness of forage harvesters combines are possible to create using the optimal number of service activities. Formation of suboptimal number of service activities results in 27% and 18% losses (1 and 7 years of operational term of forage harvester). The article considers the graph of state of technical preparedness of forage harvester combines and develops an algorithm that calculates for each year of operation and for annual operating time the following indicators: average queue length; average number of pending requests; average number of service free channels; queue idle ratio; order utilization rate; idle ratio of servicing units; complete average losses due to idle queue requirements and less channel workload; time of waiting in line. The optimum number of channels was assumed to be the number with minimal total average cost of simple queuing requirements and no channel workload. The authors found out that the cost of ensuring of technical preparedness of forage harvesters depends on year of operation of harvesters and their annual loading. These costs reduce from 13.63% to 3.12%, for the accumulation of 150-180 hectares and from 6.5% to 3.98% (181-220 hectares). Therefore, with the increasing number of harvesters and their annual loading, the change in total costs is almost offset. The fluctuations in the total costs, depending on annual operating time and service assimilation of forage harvester, are less – 13.62% (150-180 ha) and 6.5% (221-330 ha).