Journal of Agricultural Machinery (Sep 2017)
Comparison of Management-Operational Efficiency of Agricultural Machinery Operating Systems (Case Study Alborz Province)
Abstract
Introduction Measuring the efficiency of operating systems in comparison with the methods of comparing the performance of systems explains the various dimensions of issues such as, the lack of full use of agricultural machinery capacity, improper selection of machine, incorrect use of machinery, ownership, etc.. Any improvement in operating system conditions reduces costs,, consumption of inputs, increases the efficiency of production factors and consequently reduces the price and increases agricultural profitability. The main objective of this research is to compare the operational-management efficiency of operating systems in Alborz province and comparison of managerial and operational efficiency of agricultural machinery farming systems by calculating the efficiency of its major components in agricultural machinery farming systems including efficiency, social, economic, technical-operational and managerial and ranking them in order to understand the optimal model of agricultural machinery systems. Materials and Methods This research is a survey study.The study population was beneficiaries of agricultural machinery in the Alborz province which in the multi-stage random sample was determined. Alborz province has 31,438 agricultural operations, of which 543 are exploited agricultural machinery. Cochran formula was used to determine sample size. Since, Cronbach's alpha coefficient greater than 0.7 was obtained by questionnaire, the reliability of the questionnaires was assessed as desirable. To calculate the efficiency the component data were extracted from 4 specialized questionnaires after the initial examination and encoding, then they were analyzed using the software SPSS, MCDM Engine. TOPSIS techniques were used for ranking managerial performance operating system for operating agricultural machinery Alborz province. Results and Discussion The results showed that social efficiency of dedicated-professional operation with an average of 6.6 had maximum efficiency operation among the three systems of agricultural machinery. Economic efficiency of professional operation system with an average of more than 1.43 units is capable of the highest rate among the three systems and economic performance of the dedicated operation less than one and equal to 0.76 in the three systems have the lowest rate. In other words, the professional operation of the annual profit is 43%, but the annual dedicated operation is facing a 24 percent loss. Performance of management operation system is dedicated 6.19 and was the highest performance among systems. The number of dedicated- operation system 5.42 is the least efficient management of three farming system agricultural machinery in Alborz province. Appear organizing, planning, directing and coordinating, decision-making, control and supervision of the operation system was far better than the other two systems. The operating efficiency of the dedicated operating system is 76.537% and in this respect, it has the highest value among the three operating systems and the lowest operational efficiency is related to the professional operating system. The increased operational efficiency of the dedicated operating system is further influenced by the high average scores for the indicators of timely operations, the availability of the machine and the quality of the operation. Kruskal-Wallis statistical tests were performed to compare the average of four types of efficiency (social, economic, managerial, technical-operational) in three agricultural machinery farming systems, with mean difference for all items at 5% and 1% significance. Ranking of managerial-operational efficiency of agricultural machinery utilization systems using TOPSIS technique: The ranking criterion of this technique is a similarity index, with a range of 0 to 1 variation. The results showed that among the three systems of agricultural machinery exploitation, the professional farming system with the rank of 0.9219 ranked first, the professional- dedicated farming system with 0.5261 had second rank and dedicated farming system with 0.1556 ranked third Conclusions The results showed that the managerial-operational efficiency of the professional operating system was more than the other two operating systems, which was due to the high effectiveness of the management-operation of the economic efficiency and technical-operational efficiency, which in this system was more efficient from other systems. Investigating the importance of factors affecting the efficiency of agricultural machinery farming systems showed that the weight economic factors is far more than other factors and the effect of economic efficiency on the efficiency of the entire farming systems is much higher. The cost of ownership of a machine is very important among economic agents, this factor directly affects the choice of operating systems, and it also indirectly affects other factors. Therefore, it can be concluded that the key for improving agricultural machinery management and increasing the productivity of this important input is to perpend different aspects of the cost of ownership.
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