| A Farm-level INtelligent Decision Support system, FINDS, was developed for machinery management of farm-level systems. FINDS integrates a whole-farm management linear program, REPFARM, and a companion simulation model, SECURE, with a knowledge-based expert system. REPFARM is a good tool for planning optimal machinery management strategies under one farm situation. SECURE is a good tool for evaluating the outcome of the optimal plan for the farm for variable weather conditions. However, much expertise is required to utilize REPFARM and SECURE as decision support tools for farm machinery management. Therefore, a knowledge-based expert system was incorporated into the framework of FINDS to automate the model formulation, implementation, and output interpretation of REPFARM and SECURE.; The main goal of FINDS is to help the user find machinery sets and machinery operation schedules that can increase farm profit and reduce farm risk. The "intelligence" of FINDS was structured using functions and IF-THEN rules to address the main goal. With the rules and functions, FINDS automatically uses the REPFARM and SECURE models to provide the user information for making machinery management decisions. FINDS can automatically modify model input data sets to reflect changes in machinery technical information. Furthermore, the physical coding of SECURE requires modification each time the farming system changes. Therefore, FINDS also generates simulation code that is tailored to the individual needs of the user. Also, FINDS automatically runs REPFARM and SECURE and interprets their results in terms of machinery management. Finally, FINDS can offer recommendations and assistance to help the user make well informed machinery management decisions. |
