Time Consumption and Production Costs of Two Small-Scale Wood Harvesting Systems in Northern Greece

Abstract

A field-based study was carried out to determine the productivity and production cost of the tree length (TL) and the wood assortment (WA) systems implemented under small-scale forestry conditions in two Scots pine stands in Northern Greece. Tree felling and processing productivity were estimated at 8.64 m 3 per productive machine hour (PMH -1 ) and 10.21 m 3 PMH -1 , respectively. Wood felling and processing times were strongly dependent on dbh and total tree volume. However, when manual debarking was also considered the productivity rates decreased to 1.96 and 1.43 m 3 PMH -1 , respectively. Skidding productivity was calculated to be 3.35 m 3 PMH -1 for TL and 7.17 m 3 PMH -1 for WA, respectively. Strong correlations have been found between the net skidding time and (a) the skidding distance and (b) the load per turn in both wood harvesting systems. Production costs varied greatly, from 19.38 € m -3 up to 44.81 € m -3 of roundwood depending on the harvesting system and the inclusion of debarking. The findings suggest that the WA system is more efficient in terms of productivity and production cost than TL, and that there is a substantial optimization potential. The optimization potential can be encoded in four suggestions: (a) opening up of more forest roads to reduce high skidding times, (b) replacement of manual debarking by mechanical debarking at the sawmill, (c) replacement of old pieces of equipment with newer ones and (d) training of the existing workforce.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

Productivity assessment of timber harvesting techniques for supporting sustainable forest management of secondary Atlantic Forests in southern Brazil

“…Special care was taken regarding terrain conditions and the comparability of the selected two stands, in order to relate observed operational difference in the two stands purely to the harvesting methods. Thus, it was confirmed, as in earlier studies, that the most significant factors affecting productivity in both methods were tree dimensions (volume) (Jourgholami et al 2013, Koutsianitis & Tsioras 2016 and extraction distances (winching distance and skidding distance to landing) (Mousavi 2012, Hoffmann et al 2015, Hoffmann et al 2016). …”

“…Work phases were defined by individually timed cycle elements (Björheden & Thompson 2000). For estimating production rate (in m³ per productive machine hour -hereafter PMH 0 -1 ) only productive net time without any delays was considered (Koutsianitis & Tsioras 2016). The utilization rate was estimated as the ratio between productive work time (PMH 0 ) and scheduled machine hours (SMH) assigned to the operation.…”

Productivity Analysis of Tree-Length Harvesting using Farm Tractor in a Nordmann Fir Stand in Turkey

“…A cycle was defined as the time needed to extract a single load to the landing area. Each winching cycle was measured separately with the delays (Koutsianitis and Tsioras, 2017). The repetitive time measurement technique was used during the winching operation of farm tractors.…”

“…Stepwise regression analysis was also used to find the prediction model of the winching cycle time. Results of the statistical analyses were considered significant if p<0.05 (Koutsianitis and Tsioras, 2017).…”

Influence of Chain Filing, Tree Species and Chain Type on Cross Cutting Efficiency and Health Risk

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