Re: Looking for specialised skills/product/advice (farming)

Looks like a planning system with limited resources and some special constraints. What you need is extreme flexibility: weather WILL change and thus create havoc in your planning system. What is all related to a change in weather: if I can not plough today which actions (apart from the ploughing) depend on that. If I plough tomorrow, how would the rest of the dependencies change. What are the chances that I can not plough the whole month. Although you can plough 10 months a year, you don't want to plough a field that has a crop on it ;-)

All the planning and the limited resources seems to be fairly straightforward, although challenging. I think you can use standard components/software/approaches for that. The only thing that makes this special is the dependency of the tasks (the model of the agricultural system).

Apart from the software development, I would focus on the actual agricultural tasks: find a good description of how the tasks are interrelated. Be aware that the system has quite some flexibility and robustness: you can easily pick any day in september for harvesting, and any day in october as well, but changes that you find sufficient dry days in a row to actually do the harvesting diminish later in the year. So any day in september and october is good enough, but if weather turns bad for weeks in a row, you are too late, and no harvest (and thus no income). After harvesting, any day is good enough for ploughing, but you need a certain period for growing after ploughing, otherwise, again no harvest. Different requirements for different crops. Try to model that system: thats what is specific for your application....

Hope this helps. I do have a background in agriculture: agricultural water management to be precise. If you want to discuss things further or want me to review work you've done, you can contact me at wvandeursenATcarthagoDOTnl.

Regards

Willem

Didier Gasser-Morlay wrote:
As anyone around here got extensive-farming experience (as a developer of course :))

I am asked by a client to come up with a good (of course) planning tool for a group of up to 50 farms handling 25000 acres each. I could find several products used to record what has been done after the event, but nothing on the planning front.

For each field there are several task to undertake

Plough, Disk, Spray chemicals, Apply fertiliser, Seed, Spray chemical, Apply fertiliser, Harvest

the Fields one one farm are not contiguous

Each task requires a certain set of resources:
- equipment (Tractor, Plougher ...)
- Possibly Chemical products or Seeds
- Always Gazole for the tractor
- Employee
- As a constraint you can plough 10 months out of 12 but you cannot Spray when it is too windy or you do not seed in before April (there is 1m of snow anyway) etc...


During the work season, tractors are running 24/7 so some scheduled maintenance routine must take place etc...

Now if the weather is a problem, all remaining tasks have to be rescheduled on a daily basis (or sooner)

These guys are considering using ms project for the task and I do not believe that it is a proper tool for this and I wonder if any of you has had to deal with a similar project

Thanks for any advice or idea

Didier





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Willem van Deursen, The Netherlands
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    ... What you need is extreme flexibility: weather WILL change and thus create havoc in your planning system. ... What is all related to a change in weather: if I can not plough today which actions depend on that. ... Be aware that the system has quite some flexibility and robustness: you can easily pick any day in september for harvesting, and any day in october as well, but changes that you find sufficient dry days in a row to actually do the harvesting diminish later in the year. ... I do have a background in agriculture: agricultural water management to be precise. ...
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