Economic evaluation of whole-tree chip harvesting operations through simulation

Abstract

A discrete, stochastic simulation model was developed to simulate and evaluate chip harvesting systems. FSCAT, an acronym which stands for felling, skidding, chipping and trucking, was written in modular form with the coding in ANSI FORTRAN. FSCAT can simulate a wide range of equipment configurations without reprogramming. The model supplies a cost analysis of the harvest as well as production and activity times for the equipment. The model can fit five probability distributions for activity simulation. Two types of goodness-of-fit statistics are reported for each distribution fit. A user's manual and programmer's guide were constructed to aid the user in running FSCAT. FSCAT was tested by comparing simulated results to actual observations from chip harvesting operations. The results of the tests strongly support the validity of FSCAT. FSCAT was used to rank alternatives for skidder allocation in a chip harvesting operation. The cost per green ton of chips produced was the criterion used for ranking the configurations. ...