The Long-run Financial Effects of Improved Grain-handling System Efficiency on Individual Saskatchewan Grain Producers

Energy and resource efficiency are becoming more and more important objectives in industrial companies, so that it has also become relevant to material handling as part of the lean strategy in supply chain management. The design of sustainable, energy efficient material handling systems and processes depends on methods and tools that analyse and evaluate the composition of the technologies and processes of the system. Therefore analysis on detailed data on energy consumption, energy supply and process organisation is required to improve overall system efficiency. This study proposes a novel approach to energy data generation based on Standardised Energy Consuming Activities (SECA). Simulating process energy consumption and consumption behaviour based on process function investigations increases knowledge about the sequence and characteristics of energy consumption and its process allocation. Executing the research project Usable Battery Energy of the material handling equipment was identified to be gradable by 25% to 43% in order to increase equipment availability and thus system efficiency. In the performed case study a system range extension of 19% to 33% was reached by the implementation of a fast engaging charging system using process related idle times. Generally applicable data is required for the design of a scalable simulation to enable the identification of requirements to the design of non-automated material handling system components. The proposed framework forms the basis necessary for the derivation and evaluation of technical and organisational improvement of system efficiency with respect to energy, ecological and economic objectives.

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JTRF Volume 56 No. 3, Fall 2017Bringing in the Sheaves: Changes in Canada’s Grain Supply Chain Through the Post Canadian Wheat Board Era

Journal of the Transportation Research Forum ◽

10.5399/osu/jtrf.56.3.4456 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Derek G. Brewin ◽

James F. Nolan ◽

Richard S. Gray ◽

Troy G. Schmitz

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Relative Stability ◽

Rail Transportation ◽

Handling System ◽

Grain Handling ◽

Canadian Wheat Board

Vast distances in the Canadian grain handling system means that the supply chain is highly reliant on rail transportation. After years of relative stability, the grain supply chain has recently undergone many signiﬁ cant changes, including deregulation in grain handling. However, the consequences emerging from some of these changes were unexpected. In this paper, we explore the evolving behavior of participants in the increasingly liberalized Canadian grain handling supply chain. The changes seem to be creating new winners and losers in the system. To this end, we ﬁ nd that while current railroad regulations in Canada have led to efﬁ ciencies, deregulation of grain handling seems to have generated gains for grain companies at the expense of farmers.

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