Simulation of Bin Loading Process During Manual Harvest of Specialty Crops Using the Machine Repair Model

Machine repair models play an important role in many applications including computer systems, maintenance operations, and manufacturing systems. In this paper the machine repair model was adapted to describe, analyze, and simulate an agricultural application: the bin loading process during manual harvest of two specialty crops – grapes in Greece and sweet cherries in USA. In addition, a management tool was developed in Matlab, based on the proposed algorithm, to evaluate the performance of the system and find the optimal combination of bin “carriers” and “service stations”. The use of repair models for agricultural operations shows promise for developing seasonable solutions for similar applications in other specialty crops (e.g. peach and apples).