STUDY AND APPLICATION OF THE RURAL POSTMAN PROBLEM IN SUGARCANE HARVESTING

The production of sugarcane is one of the crucial activities of the Brazilian economy, being responsible for Brazil's prominent position as a world leader in the agribusiness sector. Given the cultivation of sugarcane on national soil since the 16th century, the sugarcane production chain is in a constant process of evolution, making the use of new tools and technologies important for enhancing the efficiency of the entire production process. In this scenario, the resources inherent to Operations Research allow the use of mathematical optimization models to improve critical processes in this chain. Among the main activities associated with the processing of sugarcane is the harvest, which is considered one of the highest cost stages of the production chain, making the implementation of optimization models relevant during this activity. In the context of sugarcane harvesting, the Rural Postman Problem (RPP) allows the identification of more efficient and economical harvesting routes by proposing a representation of the process in which the lines of cane to be harvested are adopted as required edges of a graph, while the spaces available for the harvester's movement are taken as non-required edges. The objective is to determine a minimum-cost path that traverses all the required edges at least once. Thus, the application of the RPP to sugarcane harvesting is analyzed to contribute to efficient and assertive management in one of the essential stages of Brazilian sugar-energy production. This paper presents a mathematical formulation for this problem and conducts several computational experiments to find solutions that minimize harvesting costs.