Design value chains and coordination mechanisms in the forest sector

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The forest sector is challenged by a complex, distributed value chain, involving a large number of stakeholders raising the needs for advanced tools to support value chain decision-making. This research will provide government, industry and communities, new ways to address together the design of value chains, making the best use of the resources and the available information. With the advanced decision support contributions provided by this research, the coordination between the units of the forest value chain will be improved in order to help the sector be more sustainable and competitive. The focus of this research program is on distributed decision-making and developing advanced collaborative planning approaches in a context where components of the value chain are independent in regard of their operations and dependent in regard of their collective performance. The role of coordination mechanisms between components of the value chain will be addressed as well as the challenges of designing these mechanisms collaboratively; notably with the support of a virtual decision room. Four graduate students will be trained and financially supported through this project. They will gain unique expertise in system engineering and value chain planning within the forest sector.