Original papersMulti-camera surveillance systems for time and motion studies of timber harvesting equipment

•A multi-camera security system was tested to conduct a time and motion study.•The system was installed on a John Deere 540G cable skidder.•Time stamped video footage was inspected to obtain time consumption of work tasks.•Accurate calculation of total cycle times and delays as well as productivity metrics.•The system can be adopted as a reliable approach to conduct time and motion studies.

We evaluated the feasibility of using a multi-camera security system to conduct time and motion studies. It was installed on a John Deere 540G cable skidder and connected to the skidder's battery for continuous recording with minimal effort and intervention. After recording the skidder's work for eleven experimental skidding cycles, time stamped video footage was visually inspected to obtain time consumption of work tasks, which provided for accurate calculation of total cycle times and delays. Several advantages of the security camera system including quick and non-invasive installation, large memory storage, transferability, resistance to weather elements, and the capacity to capture different views, offer a great potential for this method to be adopted as a reliable approach to accurately conduct time and motion studies. Along with distance and gradient information for skid-trail segments, we also explored the influence of gradient on travel time for loaded and unloaded skidding. There is a need for future studies to formally explore this relationship and develop more detailed cycle time equations that explicitly take into account skid-trail gradient for individual segments.