A MULTILEVEL DECISION-MAKING SYSTEM WITH MULTIPLE RESOURCES FOR CONTROLLING COTTON HARVESTING

A number of our recent papers have demonstrated the advantage of using multilevel production control models, especially for flexible manufac turing systems. The results obtained may be applied to various man-mac hine systems, e.g., building systems, mining, forestry, agriculture, e tc., where control actions are carried out by decision-makers on diffe rent levels since the plants are not fully automatic. The best results can be achieved for hierarchical production systems, e.g., company-se ction-production units, where each level faces stochastic optimization problems. In this paper, we consider the problem of reallocating mult iple resources among production units while all previous models includ e only one type of interchangeable resource. For control problems with several resources, all the optimization problems become more difficul t. The results obtained are used for creating a hierarchical decision- making system for controlling cotton harvesting. Three levels are cons idered - the team level, the farm level and the district level. Two ty pes of resources are considered: mechanical harvesters and workers. On the team level, the team's foreman periodically reallocates the resou rces among cotton fields. The farm level is faced with stochastic opti mization problems of reallocating resources among the teams. The distr ict level is faced with similar reallocation problems, including probl ems of determining minimal additional resource amounts that, on the av erage, guarantee completion of cotton harvesting by the due date. A nu merical example is presented. Various application areas are considered .