Browsing by Subject "logging"

The goal of this research is to map different leadership experiences within Finnish logging companies which are constituent of a new organisation model for tree harvesting. In this model, entrepreneurs have extensive service contracts and often utilise networks of smaller labour units. Finnish harvesting companies have traditionally been small and therefore these new responsibilities can add stress. This work describes attitudes towards both leadership and leadership practices. The method used in this research is theme interviews. The interviewed entrepreneurs were participating in the Menestyvä alueyrittäjä- project. There were 15 interviewees. Interviews were recorded and the recordings added up to 25 hours. The interviews were analysed and practices and attitudes classified according to theories of leadership. The interviews revealed that the client has a big impact on the strategic choices made by these companies. The most time consuming leadership task is planning. The telephone is the most used communication device and this has not been affected by the adoption of newer IT devices. Both official and casual communication is conducted over the phone. District company leaders don’t think of themselves primarily as executives. They appreciate independence and concrete results in their work. The use of information technology is generally straightforward for them. The entrepreneurs believe that their employees particularly appreciate equality and respectful, trusting relationships. Supporting employees is seen as important and entrepreneurs want to use more time in personnel management. Most of the entrepreneurs don’t use harvesting machine data to determine their employees’ pay, although this could make supervision more efficient. More successful employees are generally better paid. According to the entrepreneurs, recruiting is difficult and good employees hard to find. The interviews in this work indicate that the most difficult aspects of leadership are personnel management and the utilisation of financial information.

Lately the need to increase the amount of domestic logging has grown. That has been caused by a decrease in raw wood import. A big part of the extra logging potential is located on peatlands. Wintertime harvesting on peatlands cannot be increased since the logging equipment at that time of the year is already fully employed. That creates a need to be able to operate on peatlands year-round if the logging amounts are expected to grow significantly. With the existing average machinery and traditional equipment this is not possible. The traditional equipment for peatlands is only to mount wide steel tracks around the wheels. With this kind of equipment logging from soils with lowest bearing capacities is practically impossible if low amount of harvesting damages is expected. For logging on peatlands during the period of unfrozen ground new technical innovations are needed to decrease the surface pressure that a machine produces to the ground and to decrease its rut formation. For low rut formation there have been special machines for peatlands already for a long time but their productivity is too low for profitable logging. Since the use of special machines has been proven to be expensive, it seemed rational to focus on equipping a standard machine to perform better on peatlands and other soft soils. The main problem is to combine low rut formation and good productivity into the same machine. This is possible by adding low rut formation due to the new track system to the good productivity of a basic machine. The study was done by using constructive research method. The aim of the study was to find a good track system for a forwarder regarding low rut formation and other important properties for operating on low bearing capacity soils. First all the existing constructions were gathered and some new possible constructions were also brainstormed. From these constructions the one that seemed most potential was chosen for field testing. Support for the choice was sought by making an expert interview round. The results supported the arguments on which the choice was based on. In the field tests the test machine with the new track system and the comparison machine with the traditional track system both drove their own testing sectors which were estimated to be equal by conditions. The field test area was located in Ilomantsi and was a normal thinning site. The idea was to compare the rut formation of the track systems in real harvesting conditions that were mathematically equalized. The known factors that effect the bearing capacity were measured and their effect on the results was minimized by standardizing them mathematically. The calculations were executed by using multifactor regression analysis. The test machine caused less rut formation but the difference between the machines was quite small. There were some minor faults in the test machines properties and reliability but those are likely to be rather easily solved with some modifications to the track system.