Juho Rantala, Tiina Laine. (2010). Productivity of the M-Planter tree-planting device in practice. Silva Fennica vol. 44 no. 5 article id 125. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.125

Keywords: silviculture; cost-efficiency; mechanisation; planting; seedling; technology

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Need to mechanise tree-planting work have recently increased for many reasons. The newest planting and soil scarification device performing work in Nordic forests is the Finnish M-Planter. This study aims to clarify M-Planter’s productivity in practice and show how various factors affect it. The follow-up data set covers 607 work shifts, of 13 operators with, in total, five M-Planters. The average productivity figures for the operators were 143 and 169 seedlings per effective working hour during the first and second planting season, respectively. Overall, the measured average productivity was 34.2% lower than that observed in an earlier work study of the M-Planter based on an experimental study design. On average, the operators learned to use the combination of the M-Planter and a base machine more efficiently while their experience in using it increased during the follow-up. Increasing number of stones and stumps as well as a thicker humus layer decreased productivity of the M-Planter. The study concludes that utilisation of the full productivity potential of the M-Planter requires not only good operators but also development of the whole planting service supply chain.

Rantala, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Juntintie 154, FI-77600 Suonenjoki, Finland E-mail: juho.rantala@metla.fi
Laine, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Juntintie 154, FI-77600 Suonenjoki, Finland E-mail: tl@nn.fi

article id 515, category Research article

Juho Rantala, Kari Väätäinen, Nuutti Kiljunen, Pertti Harstela. (2003). Economic evaluation of container seedling packing and disinfection machinery. Silva Fennica vol. 37 no. 1 article id 515. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.515

Keywords: economies of scale; nursery technology; mechanisation; container seedlings; packing;

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Productivity and costs of packing container seedlings were studied in a mechanised line for packing and disinfecting seedling trays. The hypothesis was that adequate cost-efficiency could be achieved when some common principles of mechanisation were applied. Results indicated that the unit costs are lower than those of manual packing, if these principles were applied and the annual number of packed seedlings exceeded 6 million. However, most of the nurseries in Finland are still too small to gain a real advantage from large-scale production.

Rantala, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Suonenjoki Research Station, FIN-77600 Suonenjoki, Finland E-mail: juho.rantala@metla.fi
Väätäinen, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Joensuu Research Centre, FIN-80101 Joensuu, Finland E-mail: kv@nn.fi
Kiljunen, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Suonenjoki Research Station, FIN-77600 Suonenjoki, Finland E-mail: nk@nn.fi
Harstela, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Suonenjoki Research Station, FIN-77600 Suonenjoki, Finland E-mail: ph@nn.fi

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