Balogh, Antal

Benkő, János

Soós, P.

Szüle, Zs.

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Computer aided planning and information system for plant production 1Determination of the number and the places ofsugar-beet receiving repositoriesProf. J. Benkő– Prof. P. Soós – Prof. Zs. Szüle – Lect. A. BaloghSzent István University, 1. Páter K. street, Gödöllő, H-2100 Tel.: +36-28-410-799, e-mail:BENKO.JANOS@GEK.SZIE.HUResearch article No.: OTKA 037555SummarySugar-beet can be transported from the field to the sugarworks in many ways. The transporta-tion can be direct (uniarticulate) that is without takeover or combined (polyarticulate). Incase of combined transportation, several transporting vehicle and usually more subbranchesof transportation (tractors, vans, railway cars) are co-operating. The second most labour-intensive action of sugar-beet receiving is cleaning. The transport and handling of the con-taminants separated during cleaning is quite a difficult task, especially if the cleaning is doneinside the sugarworks. The problem can be solved by setting up mobile cleaning units in so-called repositories next to the fields. This study gives answer how to determine the numberand the place of the repositories, optimized from the point of view of transportation.INTRODUCTIONThe number of the factories and the needed capacity of the Hungarian beet industry is deter-mined by the EU’s production quota, that Hungary won in December 2002. The factories arenot interested in producing more or producing less sugar than the amount of the quota, ar-ranged during the connection treaty, because the overflow can only be exported at a very lowprice outside EU, while producers can lose valuable opportunities on the market if they pro-duce below quota.It is well-known that sugar-beet production is one of the most paying in field growing, so peo-ple who have the right to transport sugar-beet form a very privileged group, hard to get in. Theprivilege and the earning is derivable from the EU’s guaranteed minimal sugar-beet price thatwill expectably be 11-12 thousand HUF/tonn. The interventional price of sugar is 155-170HUF/kgs and the factory price is 180-195 HUF/kgs, depending on the market-rate of the Hun-garian Forint. These prices let reaching higher profit than now, either in sugar-beet growingand in sugar producing too.But it would be irresponsible to do nothing and neglect further developments after having thequota. On one hand the EU’s reformation of the sugar market is expected to aim the increaseddefeatment of the differences between countries by competitiveness. This results that thesugar-beet production shifts to the regions that can produce more effectively and the less ef-fective areas will have to decrease or even terminate their production. On the other hand theprofit that can be realized from the production is not only depending on the income, but it de-pends on the costs too, so the aim of the developments or at least a part of them must be aboutcutting the costs.This study only investigates a narrow field of the developments, the actions after lifting of thesugar-beet, moreover from the point of view of transportation and transportation costs.THE CURRENT PRACTICE OF SUGAR-BEET TRANSPORTATIONThe collection of sugar-beet from the fields can be direct (uniarticulate) or combined (polyar-ticulate). According to the experience in the past, the costs of loading, storing, cleaning and2 Hungarian Agricultural Engineering N17/2004transportation from the field to the receiving station were payed by the factory, independentfrom the type of the transportation.Figure 1. Former solutions for transporting between fields and sugarworksIn case of direct transportation the sugar-beet gets to the factory from the field without take-over, by road-vehicles. This solution can be seen on the left side of Figure 1 (alternative 1.).The receiving station is the factory itself, where the sugar-beet is cleaned and clamped afterthe qualitative and quantitative acceptance. The advantages of this solution are: adaptability,no need for takeover. But the high amount of contaminants (soil, furrow-weed residues, etc.)that can get inside the factory is a disadvantage, because the storage and removal of these ma-terials increase the costs.One way of the combined transportation is (Figure 1, alternative 2.) when the farmers take thesugar-beet on road-vehicles to the forwarding railroad-station, from where in the second phaseof transportation, the material gets to the factory by railroad. During this process, the sugar-beet is cleaned with mobile or stationary machines, before or after the road transportation. TheComputer aided planning and information system for plant production 3receiving station here is also the factory. The mechanical cleaning of the sugar-beet thatcomes on railway is hard to carry out, so they put the material from the carriage right into thefactory’s cleaning system, from where it goes to production in 12-24 hours. (Wet storage isnot allowed, while the autolysis of sugar on the wet surfaces is very strong, because of theraised activity of micro-organisms. Further problem is that the washed dirt means huge load tothe factory’s sewer.)The third solution (Figure 1., alternative 3.) is when producers transport to the outside receiverstation on public road. After the qualitative and quantitative acceptance of the sugar-beet, be-fore the temporary storage, the factory owned cleaning and clamping machines, operating atthe station do the necessary procedures. The transportation right to the factory can be done onpublic road or on railroad, depending on the receiver station’s traffic connections. This proce-dure could let the accepted sugar-beet to put it right into production, because of it’s cleanness.But the build-up of the public road receiver stations do not let the same, hence the sugar-beetcoming from these receiver stations, after the repeated cleaning the sugar-beets often mix withthe carriages that come from public road, according to alternative 1. Because of the repeatedcleaning, the rate of the broken beets is the highest in these carriages.LOADING AND TRANSPORTING BY ENHANCED CLEANINGWay of transportations written above have advantages and disadvantages that we representedwithout mentioning all of these. However there is a fourth method that is called enhancedcleaning by the profession and that is putting all of the advantages of the above mentionedmethods together. The body of it is that they transport the sugar-beets on public roads to thestoring repositories, where they are clamped and then a high-performance (150-450tonns/hour), self-propelled, so-called cleaning-loader machines clean and put the raw materialto the public road vehicles. The treated sugar-beet transported into the factory can be proc-essed immediately after the qualitative and quantitative acceptance. The advantages of en-hanced cleaning: the amount of the contaminants (soil, furrow-weeds, etc.) that can get insidethe factory is minimal, so there is need to care about their storage and treatment. The trans-porting costs decrease, because less weight must be transported into the factory and there is noneed to transport the contamination. The floating-water and cleaning-water consumption de-creases, that cuts back the costs of water handling and cleaning. The decrease of the contami-nation in the carriages increases the objectivity sugar-beet grading and it also decreases themargin of errors in measurements. It is an environment-friendly procedure that fits for themore and more strict environmental rules.Not only the above mentioned advantages motivate the establishing of the method, but theguaranteed, minimal EU price of sugar-beet payed to the farmers that contains the cost of thetransportation between the field and the repository, the clamping, the cleaning and the loading.The transportation cost between the repository and the factory would still be payed by thesugarworks. This means that the interest of the sugarworks is to have repositories that are eas-ily accessible, as close to the factory as it is possible. This is a bit different from what the pro-ducers want.It can be easily conceded that the most sensitive point of the establishing is choosing theplace, the number and the size of the sugar-beet repositories. When assignating the place of arepository it is a basic term to the warehoused sugar-beets to be easily transported to the fac-tory in case of extreme weather circumstances too and transportation does not endanger thecontinuous operation.4 Hungarian Agricultural Engineering N17/2004Setting the optimal place of repositories (that needs the least transporting costs) is currentlyvery difficult, because the lack of agricultural road-network with concrete surface. The onlysolution to the problem is evolving the concrete surfaced roads between the existing agriculu-ral roads and the optimally set repositories. These costs would fall on to the producers and thesugarworks. (A good example is the Sugarworks in Kaba, where the factory and the farmersjointly invested to built repositories, linked directly to the concrete surfaced road networkwithin an ’Agricultural road and repository building’ program.)The size of a certain clamp is depending on the operating, the capacity of the cleaning-loadermachine, the size of the served field and on the danger of freezing. Different cleaning-loadersneed different sizes of repositories built. Machines fed with loaders can be used at any size ofclamps. Machines that have own pick-up boards need 6-8 m wide clamps. Small clamps canbe built by special transporting vehicles and in favourable cases they can be directly built withthe bunkered harvest machines. In case of conventional transporting with trailer a particularloading machine is needed. When using small clamps the danger of freezing is higher that canbe avoided with covering.ESTABLISHING THE OPTIMAL PLACE OF REPOSITORIESThe establishing of the optimal place of a repository is a so-called multidivisional and two-step depot exploring problem, where the repositories with unknown co-ordinates and thesugarworks with known co-ordinates are the centers, and the sugar-beet fields are the serveddepots. First step of transportation is between the fields and the repositories, the second step ismoving between the repositories and the sugarworks.In the problem the capacity of the served depots (fields) and the co-ordinates of the field cen-ters are known. Capacity can be calculated from the size of the area and from the yield. Thenumber of repositories equals to the number of cleaning loaders. Although the loaders aremovable, it seems to be suitable to use the precept of one loader per repository. The capacityof the repository is defined by the performance (180-220 tonns/hour) of the loader. Accordingto the experiences a loader can clean 100 thousand tonns of sugar-beet a season, that means itcan serve 1700 hectares of field, based on a 60 tonns/hectare yield. Sugarworks are centerswith unusual characteristics, because not even their capacities, but their co-ordinates are alsoknown.The questions that need to be answered are the followings: Where to put the repositories?How to set up areas, that is to which repository to transport from the certain sugar-beet fields?Based on the above mentioned things, the condition system and the objective function of themathematical model that can solve the problem is the following:(1) 0ijX , 0ikY , where i=1,2,...,n, j=1,2,...,m, k=1,2,...,l(2)  ijij tX(3)  jiij fX(4)  ikik rY(5)  iijj ftComputer aided planning and information system for plant production 5(6)  kkjj rt(7) min)()()()( 2222  i kikikiki jijijij vuYvyuxXQ Where n is the number of repositories, m is the number of the sugar-beet fields, l is the num-ber of sugarworks, ijX is the amount transported from field j to repository i, ikY is the amounttransported from repository i to factory k, tj is the capacity of field j (equals to the yield of thefield), fi is the capacity of repository i, rk is the capacity of repository k, ifis the amounttransported to repository i, ),( iii vur are the co-ordinates of reposiory i, ),( jjj yxr are the co-ordinates of field j, ),( kkk r are the co-ordinates of sugarworks k, Q is the transportationwork.The solution of the object is to set up areas from the sugar-beet fields and to find the center-points of the certain repositories. This means we lead back tthe problem to single area prob-lems.The first step of he solution is to make areas, that means classifying each field to a certain re-pository. The simplest way to that is to use a so-called combinations chart (chart 1.) in whichc ij is the distance between repositories (Di) and sugar-beet fields (Tj), dij is the distance be-tween repositories (Di) and factories (Gk) and (tj) is the capacity of the field, (fi) the reposito-ries and (rk) the factories.Combinations chartThe elements of matrix cij can be counted by:c x u y vij j i j i   ( ) ( )2 2 ,and the elements of matrix dki can be counted by:22 )()( ikikki vud   .For this we take the starting co-ordinates of the repository ri(ui,vj) discretionarily before thefirst iteration.6 Hungarian Agricultural Engineering N17/2004For the making of the areas, similar to the Vogel-Korda method, we figure differentials toevery coloumn (ki) that are the differences of the two smallest elements of the coloumn.First we complete the making of the areas in the DiTj partition, that means first we order thesugar-beet fields to the repositories. We start programming in the coloumn, where the differ-ence is the biggest. We place the biggest amount possible (Xij) onto the smallest element ofthe coloumn and we continue programming with the coloumn that’s difference is the next inthe row. We eliminate the rows and coloumns where there are no more elements left. Wheneliminating a row, we have to calculate the differetials again. We have to take care not to ex-ceed the given upper bounds (fi).After ordering the sugar-beet fields and the repositories to each other, we calculate theamounts transported into the repositories by using the formula: jiij fX , i=1,2,...,nWe fill in the results to the chart and we complete the making of areas in the GkDi partitionalso by using the method described above.After setting up the areas, each area can be examined as individual, single area problems. Thisway the places of the centers ),( iii vur can be determined by using the iterative formulas of thecenter-investigation beside co-ordinates. The iterative formulas of the center-investigation be-side co-ordinates in area i are:jkijijjkijjijki cXcxXu )()()1(//,jkijijjkijjijki cXcyXv )()()1(//,where 2)(2)()( )()( kijkijkij vyuxc  , and k is the number of iterations.After every iterational step we investigate the following conditions: )()1( kiki uu , )()1( kiki vvWhere is an arbitrarily small number. We finish the iterational process if the conditions arefulfilled, otherwise we go on working with the method.We make a new combinational chart from the new center co-ordinates ( ),( iii vur ) and we putthe sugar-beet fields again into new areas. The method finishes when two combinationalcharts lead to the same areas, two times over. Note that the success of the method is highlydepending on the determination of the starting values. It can happen that we only get local po-sition of minimum. We can avoid this by calculating several times with different starting val-ues. We can only be satisfied if we get the same results with different center series.Computer aided planning and information system for plant production 7The final results tell us the co-ordinates ( ),( iii vur ) that mark the opimal places of the reposito-ries (Di), the effective capacity of the reposittories ( if), the sugar-beet fields (Tj) belonging tothe repository i and the repositories that belong to the sugarwork k.5. References1. J. Benkő: Logistic planning (With agricultural applications) - Logisztikai tervezés. (Me-zőgazdasági alkalmazásokkal) Dinasztia Kiadó, Budapest, 2000. 199 p.2. B. Fischer: The position and the challenges of our department. Sugar industry - Ágazatunkhelyzete, kihívásai. Cukoripar, LVI évfolyam, 2 szám, 2003. április-június, 54-55 p.3. J. Füzy: The directions of machinery improvement and the efficiency in sugar-beet harvest-ing - Gépesítés fejlesztési irányok és hatékonyság a cukorrépa betakarításban. Cukoripar, LIIévfolyam, 2 szám, 1999. április-június, 76-80 p.4. J. Kondás: Logistic procedures at the Agricultural Directorate of Szerencs SugarworksCorp. - Logisztikai folyamatok a Szerencsi Cukorgyár Rt. mezőgazdasági igazgatóságánál.(Szakmérnöki diplomaterv), GATE, GTK. Vállalatgazdálkodási Szakmérnöki Szak, Gödöllő,1998.5. L. Szilágyi: Loading with enhanced cleaning in practice at Kaba Sugarworks Corp. - A fo-kozott tisztítású rakodás gyakorlata a Kabai Cukorgyár Rt.-nél. Cukorrépa termesztési és ter-meltetési tanfolyam. Cukoripari Egyesülés, Budapest 2001. 104-107 p.Publikálva:Hungarian Agricultural Engineering N17/2004

Determination of the number and the places of sugar-beet receiving repositories

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