OPERATIONAL TIMELINESS AS AN OBJECT OF PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT IN AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION

Programmes for the development of agricultural mechanization are conventionally monitored through input indicators: the number of tractors delivered, the horsepower available per hundred hectares, the share of holdings with access to machinery. These indicators measure the provision of a resource. They do not measure how that resource is managed, and consequently they cannot distinguish a district in which machinery is deployed to an agronomic schedule from one in which the same machinery stands idle through the critical operating window. For the discipline of management, this is an unsatisfactory position: the object being administered is not the object being measured.