Integrated approach for the bucking and production planning problems in forest industry

Abstract

The appropriate integration among production activities is a key factor for the development of the forest industry in the northeast of Argentina. Sawmills are one of the main logs consumers. However, production planning of sawmills has been managed independently of the forest production. In this work, a mixed integer linear programming formulation is proposed in order to achieve an adequate logs supply that allows carrying out an efficient lumber production plan. Bucking decisions, as the number of stems to be harvested and the employed bucking patterns, are jointly solved with sawmill planning decisions, like the number and type of processed logs and the used cutting patterns, in order to fulfill the boards demands maximizing the net profit along the time horizon composed by several time periods (days). Through examples, the capabilities of the proposed approach are highlighted and the computational results are analyzed.