Improving Forestry Transport Efficiency through Truck Schedule Optimization: a case study and software tool for the Australian Industry

An important problem for forestry in-field chipping operations is the efficient daily truck transportation of chips from different coupes being harvested, with known supplies, to customer destinations with known daily demands. This paper presents initial results from a trial with FastTRUCK, a software tool that uses a simulated annealing approach to optimise truck schedules. The software was developed by the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Forestry, to evaluate some of the factors that affect transportation efficiency within Australian in-field chipping operations. The analysis of results focused on: chipper productivity and utilisation; number of chipping operations accessible to each truck; truck loading and unloading time; net payload on daily transportation costs; number of truck;, and finally, average truck utilisation. Results obtained on synthetic data, derived from expert knowledge, suggest payload and chipper utilisation are the main factors affecting transportation efficiency, and thus limiting cost savings. The estimated potential savings are 52% and 29% from current levels, respectively, and are thought obtainable from better control and management of the investigated factors. Future work shall consider ways of validating the feasibility of implementing changes in forestry operations which may work towards achieving the identified efficiencies, and thus, cost savings.