Operational transportation planning in the forest industry integrating bucking decisions

Abstract

The forest supply chain encompasses different closely related operations. Harvesting and transportation decisions are interdependent, where a modification in the former has a considerable impact on the latter. In the literature, these decisions are usually approached in a decoupled way, leading to suboptimal solutions. In this work, a mixed integer linear programming model that integrates both problems for a weekly planning horizon is presented. In addition to decisions about bucking patterns selection in each harvest area and the trucks routing, the composition of the load and the scheduling of the harvesting crews are considered. In this way, the different involved tradeoffs are simultaneously addressed and solved. Through the obtained results, the capabilities of the proposed model are analyzed.