Rangeland Ecology & Management

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A framework for optimising capital investment and operations in livestock logistics
Author
Higgins,Andrew
Watson,Ian
Chilcott,Chris
Zhou,Mingwei
García-Flores,Rodolfo
Eady,Sandra
McFallan,Stephen
Prestwidge,Di
Laredo,Luis
Publisher
CSIRO Publishing
Publication Year
2013
Body

Despite the longevity, scale and importance of northern Australia's beef industry, recent disruptions to external markets have demonstrated a degree of vulnerability to shocks in the supply chain. Matching the industry's long-evident resilience to climatic variability with resilience to changes in markets and supply chains requires careful planning. One component of this is how investments in infrastructure will need to be planned to facilitate adaptive responses to market changes. This paper provides an outline of a modelling framework that links strategic and operational dynamic models of logistics along the supply chain from the property to the abattoir or port. A novelty of the methodology is that it takes into account the high granularity of individual livestock transport vehicle movements and the ability to scale up to an almost complete view of logistics costs across the entire beef industry of northern Australia. The paper illustrates how the methodology could be used to examine the effects of changes in logistics infrastructure on efficiency and costs using examples from the states of Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Journal Issue/Article
Journal Volume
35
Journal Number
2
Journal Name
The Rangeland Journal