A knowledge system agroconsult for evaluation

06.10.2000 | ČZU

A KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM AGROCONSULT FOR EVALUATION OF PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES AND MACHINERY

Prof.Ing. Miroslav Kavka, DrSc.

Czech Agricultural University in Prague, Technical Faculty

Department of Machinery Utilization

Phone: 02/24383312, Fax: 02/20921361, E-mail: KVK@TF.CZU.CZ

Abstract:

The knowledge system called „AgroConsult“ has been built up to meet the needs of conceptual and real-time management in the agricultural production. It consists of 3 modules.

· Database of agricultural standards (general, production technologies, machinery and statutory norms/recommendations, customers, calculation results).

· Expert calculations (evaluations of production technologies, utilization of machinery, and comparison between normative and actually reached values in the agriculture production).

· System actions and inventories

Except the computerized form, the agricultural standards and statutory norms are moreover available in three monographic edition called: “Agricultural Production in Tables and Numbers”,” Agricultural Production technologies in tables and numbers”, “Statutory Norms and Recommendations for Farmers in Agriculture”.

Keywords:

Knowledge system, database of agricultural standards, production technologies, machinery costing, gross margin, optimization of production structure

1. Introduction

The knowledge system AgroConsult has been developed to meet the needs of conceptual and real-time management in the agricultural production. It consists of 3 modules.

· Database of agricultural standards (general, production technologies, machinery and statutory norms/recommendations, customers, calculation results).

· Expert calculations (evaluations of production technologies, utilization of machinery, and comparison between normative and actually reached values in the agriculture production).

· System actions and inventories

Except the computerized form, the normative guidelines and statutory regulations are moreover available in three monographic edition called: “Agricultural Production in Tables and Numbers”,” Agricultural Production Technologies in Tables and Numbers”, “ Statutory Norms and Recommendations for Farmers”.

2. Database structure

2.1. Database of agricultural standards

The structure of the agricultural standards has been selected with respect to a farmer who must be able to allow for market conditions, current trends in technical development, and properties of farming materials, animals, and machinery in his considerations. As well as the farmer ought to have the possibility to match the actual results against guidelines and assess the standard already reach, and to prepare the business strategies.

In this content the database includes:

· General standards of economic surrounding.

· Prices of basic and auxiliary materials, farming processes, and cost.

· Characteristics of conditions in plant production, soil characteristics, the area of plant fertilization and protection (summary of research results) including the fertilizers prices and other key agrochemical data (plant varieties, agrochemical terms, vegetation periods, sowing, etc.).

· Characteristics of farming conditions in animal breeding.

· Need of nutrients and fodder for individual categories of animals.

· Characteristics of breeding data.

· Per-machines specific cost (with variable cost differentiated) and prices.

· For mechanized works and specific prices of agricultural machinery and farm power equipment; minimum yearly performance rates of machined integrated in sets; business strategies with use of machinery.

· Standards for basic/auxiliary material consumption and machinery requirements (including the annual use of machines and sets of machines supported by economically equitable explanation).

· Alternative worked procedures and calculation of cost, yields, profits on per-procedures basis; the machinery based alternative working procedures have been compiled for 467 versions differing in technical background.

· Cost of farm structures.

2.2. Databases of production technologies

The structure of this database has been selected as farmer-friendly, making it possible for him to prepare the annual plans of production and production procedures with respect to the requirements and conditions prevalent in the farming product market. Except the description of the accomplished working operations for 3 level of production intensity (Plant Growing: Standard, Intensive; Animal Breeding: Standard, Higher Factor of Usability, High Intensity) there are also examples of calculation of labor and fuel consumption requirements, material (fodder, fertilizers, chemicals) and of cost within the structure: cost for work, material, energy, machines, custom works, and others. As a superstructure over the production technologies and structures according the current state of the market and with use of the compensation contribution is considered. In all, the growing technologies and calculations are includes for 34 crop types and breeding technologies and calculations for 11 animals categories in 17 types of sheds.

2.3. Database of statutory norms and recommendations

Another farmer friendly database allowing quick orientation among the statutory norms and recommendations necessary for farmers, doing so in a easy-access form.

The collection has also been published in a book form under the title „ Statutory Norms and Recommendations for Farmers“. In addition to the text itself, it also presents the examples of key mandatory documents. Once installed, this database acquires a form of the MS WORD file. Due to this feature, the user can copy anything (e.g. examples of contract and other legal documents) into new files, using just standard modes of operation.

2.4. Database of machines

When creating this database, the authors had mainly in mind the needs to evaluate utilization of machines, to plan strength and structure of the new machines by means of the normative method, and to elaborate the business strategy with machinery. Besides the machinery utilization factors, the data in the form of catalogue sheets and other database sets can be printed out, giving thus rise to the User Catalogue of Machines. Information for 1000 types of machines have been entered altogether.

2.5. Database of customers and expert calculation results

This database forms a part of expert calculations. The records of the counseling system customers and results of expert calculations can be kept for future comparisons.

3. Program description

3.1. Architecture

The methodology anticipated utilization of the ACCESS relational database system which is included in the software package of MS OFFICE. Owing to the former, the resulting system could be worked out on professional standard.

Fig.1 Structure of the AgroConsult

User interface

Database Expert calculations

Output Contents Contents Output

Agricultural production in tables and numbers Agricultural standards ------------- Comparison of standards and real data Differs among standards and real data

Agricultural technologies in tables and numbers Technologies of production ------------- Evaluation of agricultural technologies Comparison of variants

Statutory norms and recommendations for farmers Statutory norms and recommendations for farmers

Catalogue of machines Data on agricultural machines ------------- Evaluation of machinery Working data on machinery, costs, business strategies

System

When envisaged from the ACCESS database point of view, the entire systems consists of a set of forms (on-screen objects) and reports (objects to be printed). The forms and reports are broken down into three modules see Fig. 1 as follows:

· Database of data (normative guidelines, production technologies, machines and statutory norms and recommendations, customers, and calculation results):

· Data entry and database updating.

· Output information viewing and printing.

· Expert calculations (evaluation of production technologies, machinery, utilization and renovation, and for matching the normative guidelines against the values really reached in agricultural production):

· Evaluation of production technologies and structure of production using the standards and computing gross margin as a criterion for simplex method.

· Evaluation of machinery utilization in sets with related calculation (balance of costs and yields, economy of technological transportation, graphic comparison, prices for mechanized works and machines)

· Calculation of the newly required agricultural machines with use of the normative method, and business strategy with machinery.

· Comparison of the standards to the really achieved results in the fields of plant and animal products.

· System actions and inventories.

The survey of anticipated possibilities points to the effort to set up the system designed within which the data could be not only caught up in their respective records, but also used for creation of production plans and strategies. Outputs from the system can be generated in the customer structure (only a part of information optionally, including the corresponding contents and key words). The system is further provided with effective means of selection and sorting. Selection of the database information can take of selection and sorting. Selection of the database information can take place on either of several levels, pursuant to various criteria, as follows:

I. Primary criteria:

· Outline selection (sorting tree) according to areas, groups and areas, and by tables.

· Selection by the specified sequence of characters.

II. Secondary criteria

· Selection by contents of the on-selector data elements.

3.2. Description of modules

3.2.1. Module of “Evaluation of the Production Structure and Technologies”

Evaluation of Production Technologies: For every crop or animal type the database contains the relevant data and calculations of consumption rates, productive output, yield rates, and costs. With use of the software package, user counseling systems can be established and more alternative evaluations of the production structure and technologies calculated. The system is based on the calculations of gross margin for various alternatives of the production structure and corresponding technologies obtained from the database as the initial values. These production technologies can be modified, allowing evaluation of costs, yields, and gross profit in their balance forms thereafter. The optimization in structure can be reached with use of the modified simplex method.

The total results of the calculation can be divided into six parts:

1. General view of the production structure - assigned, minimum, maximum and optimum (by criteria gross margin) capacity and intensity of production.

2. Entire results of the calculation for one variant - market production, variable and technological cost, gross margin, optimum capacity of production and balance of labor.

3. The balance of forage.

4. The balance of yield and production cost, gross margin and profit.

5. Technologies of plant and animal production

6. Comparison of calculation of particular variant.

3.2.2. Modules of “ Evaluation of Machine Utilization ”

The modules are designed to evaluate the machinery utilization in sets and to generate the alternative machinery/technological assemblies, or to calculate the number of machines for the customers included in the database respectively.

The evaluation of machinery utilization is based on economic considerations (cost and labor price calculation, decisions about suitable forms of ownership, calculation of investment return conditions and yield rates over usage duration, decisions about timely sell-out actions, calculation of the minimum per-annum utilization or maximum machine buy-in prices applied to the specific farm conditions), graphic comparisons of machine and sets with selection of the optimum alternative for specific conditions of the particular farm, compilation of price-lists for the works carried out by the sets, calculation of the technical/economical parameters of the technological transportation.

The required number and structure of machinery has been calculated with use of the modified normative method which must have a considerable number of the normative input data. They are subdivided into the data covering the structure of production and the standards of the machines in need. For every customer, there can be more of the alternative calculations kept in the database.

4. Conclusion

The software package of AgroConsult came to life to meet the counseling requirements in the field of evaluation of the structure and production and its technologies and assessment of machinery utilization with use of normative methodology. Its development is carried out in close coordination with the FarmInfo program system in possession of the CompAct Bohemia Ltd. company, all within the limits of the NAZV EP71176 project. In their final versions, both of these systems will be interconnected so that the standards could be made more adequate to real state of things on the basis of the parameters traced by the FarmInfo system. On the other hand, the FarmInfo system will make use of the standards of the AgroConsult system as the real-time evaluation entries.