Fuel consumption....

[cj@royal]

I would think that the quality of the finished prouduct,while hard to measure,has to be the most important factor when measuring efficiency.

[snowwizard]

Are you speaking of the good old "Dashboard"?

That thing was useless for (at least) two reasons:
1. No one ever looked at it, cared about it, said anything about it
2. It measured meaningless stuff.

I crunch data b/c I like to. The data I pursue is the only objective aspect of grooming I know, that CAN be measured. The rest; the quality of the finished product, and the enjoyment gotten from skiing it...that's hard to measure objectively. But that doesn't make it any less important. Likewise, this data. W/o it, how can you possibly know the efficiency of your operation?

I originally came up the the "idea to track grooming" (not a new idea, I don't think), to get objective data that clearly shows how one make/model cat performs against another. To see where the greatest efficiency lies. It has grown into much more than that, now though. It's a PITA entering all of it, but the results are pretty cool, and they tell a clear story.

No not the Dashboard, never heard of that one. I made a excel spreadsheet. Listed all the trails with acreage. Operators put down how much time they spent on the trail to within a 1/2 hour. Entered in the time for each trail on sheet. Entered fuel used from each tractor on that shift. I set up the spread sheet to total weekly totals then monthly toals and yearly totals. I could break down how many hours were spent grooming each trail. Again this could be seperated in weekly, monthly, and season. When mountain was fullly opened were grooming about 450 acres nightly. We were grooming with the old BR275's. As i remember the 275's on a average were grooming about 40- 50 acres a shift. Fuel was about 50 - 60 gals per tractor (shift). Ran 2 shifts. I enjoyed putting this together but is was time consuming. I wanted to try to use pda's for each tractor so i could download the info instead of going through all the tractor logs each day. Tractor logs would be in the pda's. I always wondered how the gps tracking system would work, or if it be even worth trying it. After all of this it was an educational tool for me yes defintly. I would go with what the product is every day. Get it done and do it right for what the conditions are.

[Tom400CFI]

I would think that the quality of the finished prouduct,while hard to measure,has to be the most important factor when measuring efficiency.

I can't imagine that anyone would disagree w/that. For sure, product quality comes first.

[Tom400CFI]

No not the Dashboard, never heard of that one. I made a excel spreadsheet. Listed all the trails with acreage. Operators put down how much time they spent on the trail to within a 1/2 hour. Entered in the time for each trail on sheet. Entered fuel used from each tractor on that shift. I set up the spread sheet to total weekly totals then monthly toals and yearly totals. I could break down how many hours were spent grooming each trail. Again this could be seperated in weekly, monthly, and season. When mountain was fullly opened were grooming about 450 acres nightly. We were grooming with the old BR275's. As i remember the 275's on a average were grooming about 40- 50 acres a shift. Fuel was about 50 - 60 gals per tractor (shift). Ran 2 shifts. I enjoyed putting this together but is was time consuming. I wanted to try to use pda's for each tractor so i could download the info instead of going through all the tractor logs each day. Tractor logs would be in the pda's. I always wondered how the gps tracking system would work, or if it be even worth trying it. After all of this it was an educational tool for me yes defintly. I would go with what the product is every day. Get it done and do it right for what the conditions are.

That is very thorough. You developed your tracking system further than I have so far. I do plan to take mine further....I like to "geek out" on that stuff.

PDA's is a cool idea for entering the night's work. It would make the managers job of DL'ing the data, much easier, I think.

GPS systems....I've looked into those and as they stand today, I'm not sure how they can help, over a system like the one which you had in place. I mean, what DOES a GPS really show you? Where a cat has gone on the hill, and average speed, stationary time...some other things. But in the morning, you get a "map" w/a bunch of black lines scribbled all over it. How is that useful? I can't see it...but maybe I just don't understand it completely.

For my old ASC reporting, we had a spread sheet that was called the Dashboard. In Row 1, there was weeks, and in column A, it had the measured items, and all were on and only on, a per WEEK basis;
Acres groomed
Winching hours
Park hours
Idle hours
Pushing and "special projects" -what ever that meant
Gallons used

Again, only in a per week, bulk basis. What good is that? No good, IMO. Opinion enhanced by the fact that NO ONE ever said a single thing about the data that we reported. I bet that I could have filled the sheet w/zero's and no one would have said anything. I wasn't interested in pursuing that data, or recording it in that format, b/c it was of no help to me. Not useful. I'm thinking now, that our "Dashboard" was simply our particular resorts' way of meeting ASC's reporting criteria. (?) Don't know why you and I didn't have the same template. Sounds like yours was way better than ours.