The information about field efficiency and capacity of agricultural machinery is very important for the management of agricultural mechanized systems, helping supporting administration at making decisions. The information is usually obtained by manual ways using resources like, time and people. By considering the importance of the information and the cost of the acquisition, the proposal of this work was to present a methodology to determination field capacity, using information from a yield monitor. Therefore a time motion study, from data files gathered by yield monitors, during a harvester operation in eight farms in the state of Parana (Brazil) was carried out. The time difference related to the harvester in the field was calculated from the collected data and a map of the differences was developed. Using the differences it was possible to get the field efficiency, field capacity and throughput capacity maps. The suggested methodology is practicable and allows the evaluation, based on a sample that embraces many points and is automatically obtained, of the harvester with no additional expense for the farmers.
precision agriculture; mechanization; management
