Conceptual model of fleet management in agriculture

Agricultural fleet management is viewed as farmers' or machine contractors' decision-making concerning, for example, resource allocation, scheduling, routing, and real-time monitoring of vehicles and materials. In order to optimise this management task, fleet management tools are used for decision support to improve scheduling, routing and other operational measures for a fleet of agricultural machines. Additionally, fleet management involves the process of supervising the use and maintenance of machines and the associated administrative functions including the coordination and dissemination of tasks and related information for solving the heterogeneous scheduling and routing problems. In order to analyse the complex situation of how to develop an effective Fleet Management System, a conceptual model was developed based on a participatory approach and subsequent system analysis. This involved identification of the scope of the system, identification of user requirements, conceptual modelling, identification of actors and decision processes, and information-needs modelling. A holistic view and scope of the system is presented together with the system constraints. The results build on extracted information from selected actors in the agricultural domain. The systems components are depicted and linked to the subsequent conceptual model of the overall system as an outline for a subsequent tool development and implementation.