Coordinated and synchronized operational level planning of forest-based biomass supply chains

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Utilization of forest-based biomass, as a renewable source to produce bioenergy and other bioproducts, has the potential to contribute to "cascade use of biomass", "circular economy", and consequently sustainable development. Forest-based biomass is a versatile resource that can be used to produce a variety of bioproducts, and unlike some other renewable sources, it can be stored and used on demand. Its availability in some rural and forest-dependent communities in Canada help the local economy, increase fuel security, and reduce emissions when it is used to produce bioenergy and biofuels. Despite the potential advantages, there are still barriers in utilization of this valuable resource. Among them, its high logistics cost and complex supply chain detriment its economic competitiveness. It is reported that in some cases, logistics cost accounts for more than 50% of the feedstock cost and is the main barrier in using biomass to generate bioenergy and biofuels. Therefore, designing and planning efficient forest-based biomass supply chains are essential to improve its competitiveness. While a large number of previous studies focused on optimization of strategic and tactical planning of forest-based biomass, studies on its operational level planning are few. Furthermore, considering variations in the supply chain such as those in biomass supply amount and quality as well as including social and environmental impacts in operational level models are not done before. In general, less effort has been made to synchronize the supply chain and coordinate activities of forest products. Synchronization and coordination of logistical and supply chain activities for forest-based biomass and forest products would further improve the planning. Operational level planning is related to short-term decisions on collection, preprocessing, storage, transportation and distribution. These decisions affect the logistics and feedstock costs. Hence, the objective of this research is to focus on operational (short term) planning of forest-based biomass and develop suitable optimization models in which attention is paid to: 1) synchronization and coordination of activities with those for logs and other forest products, 2) consideration of multiple objectives (economic, environmental and social), and 3) variations in the supply chain. The attempt in this project is to propose alternatives to improve the economic, environmental and social benefits of using forest biomass, which would be wasted otherwise.