A multilevel decision-making system with multiple resources for controlling cotton harvesting

A number of the present recent papers have demonstrated the advantage of using multilevel production control models, especially for flexible manufacturing systems. The results obtained may be applied to various man-machine systems, e.g. building systems, mining, forestry, agriculture, etc., where control actions are carried out by decision-makers on different levels since the plants are not fully automatic. The best results can be achieved for hierarchical production systems, e.g. company section-production units, where each level faces stochastic optimization problems. In this paper, the authors consider the problem of reallocating multiple resources among production units while all previous models include only one type of interchangeable resource. For control problems with several resources, all the optimization problems become more difficult. The results obtained are used for creating a hierarchical decision-making system for controlling cotton harvesting. Three levels are considered-the team level, the farm level and the district level. Two types of resources are considered: mechanical harvesters and workers. On the team level, the team’s foreman periodically reallocates the resources among cotton fields. The farm level is faced with stochastic optimization problems of reallocating resources among teams. The district level is faced with similar reallocation problems, including problems of determining minimal additional resource amounts, that on the average, guarantee completion of cotton harvesting by the due date. A numerical example is presented. Various application areas are considered.