Decision Support System for Estimating Operating Costs and Break-Even Units of Farm Machinery

Farm machinery costs make up a significant part of the operating and overhead costs of any farm operation. If the capital invested in a machine is to be used efficiently, that machine must be used over enough hectares or for enough hours to have costs comparable to or below custom hiring rate. This paper presents a decision support system (DSS) for calculating the total operating cost and break-even units of farm machinery. The guidelines given in IS 9164 (1979) were followed for estimating operating cost of farm machinery. The DSS leading to computer software developed in Visual Basic (TM) programming provided the intuitive user interfaces by linking databases such as useful life of the implement/machine in years and hours and percentage of accumulated repair cost to support the decision on custom hiring of farm machines. The application of DSS was demonstrated to calculate the operating cost and break-even units for custom hiring of combine. It was concluded that the DSS can be used effectively in calculating the operating cost of farm machinery and in suggesting break-even units for custom hiring of farm machines.