Functional and cross-level integration of wood procurement planning systems

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In Canada the forest industry is a prime employment provider and a major contributor to the commercial trade balance. In the past, Canada's main competitive advantage resided in abundant forest resources and efficient transformation industries. Resource is not quite as abundant as in the past and processing efficiency is not sufficient anymore. Process integration and supply-chain management is now believed to offer great potential for global performance improvements. The Wood Supply System (WSS) is a major component within the forest industry supply chain. It unites the forest with the consuming mills and includes harvesting, transportation, access road construction and maintenance, sub-contractors management, and wood inventory control. In recent years, much as been achieved to improve our knowledge of the business and process performance of the Canadian forest product industry through better supply-chain design, and integrated decision making at the finished product-end of the chain (the mills and the distribution system). However, to really benefit from the gains made by optimizing and synchronizing lumber processing and distribution activities it is necessary to improve and integrate wood procurement planning at the forest operations level. The research program described in this proposal is aimed at: (1) developing a holistic model of the decisional scheme involved in wood procurement at all planning levels of a wood procurement organisation; (2) proposing an organizational information system to support the integrated planning system; and (3) exploring the relevance of designing more flexible wood procurement systems which will have an impact on future model development.