Economic Benefits of Long Term Forestry Machine Data Capture: Austrian Federal Forest Case Study

Operating forest machines is not only expensive but accurate monitoring of economic variables can be very difficult. Detailed machine data capture of economic variables within a forest enterprise can be used to decision support processes, especially accurate costing for new investments. The objectives of this study were to analyze economic variables of forest machinery based on long-term recorded data from one of the Austrian federal state forest machinery workshops. The study used data from the enterprise’s resource planning system over the period 2004 to 2008. In total 28 cable yarders, 19 skidders, 12 harvesters and 18 forwarders where analyzed for annual utilization, repair costs, fuel consumption and lubrication costs. The average annual utilization of all skidders was approximately 1,150 productive machine hours (PMH) per year. Fuel consumption ranged between 5.1 and 9.4 liters/PMH. Repair costs range between 9.5 and 15.4 !/PMH. For the fully mechanized harvesting system the forwarders achieved 2,070 PMH/year and the harvesters 2,040 PMH/year. The annual utilization of cable yarding systems is between 560 PMH and 1,500 PMH