Browsing by Author "Mäkelä, Timo"

The wood procurement companies and the forest industry are linked in both economical and operational perspective. Therefore, the success of one is dependent on another. In Finland, the procurement volumes are to increase, so efficient performance of procurement operations is vital. In this study, the operational environment and operative practices of the chosen 12 procurement companies were studied by analyzing procurement data of three years’ period, by interviewing the entrepreneurs and by assessing their operative practices with a cost analysis model. The results point out considerable variation in the procured volume and productive machine hours. Common problems were related to timber reception at mills and difficulties in resource utilization planning due to varying amount of harvesting work. Entrepreneurs hoped for larger forest stand inventory and more systematic planning in acquisition of stands to optimize logistics and harvesting. Variation in the worksite preparation performance of the employees of the customers requires improvement and entrepreneurs have development to do in performance monitoring and attitudes towards it. Variation in tools used for monitoring and resources dedicated to it was notable. Limitations of management resources appeared in middle-size companies and hiring supervisor-level personnel is a high threshold. Unit costs for harvesting varied considerably, but in general higher productive machine hours decrease the unit cost. Decrease of the annual standstill-time and transit distances and adequate worksite volume and machinery utilization rate are key factors, that can affect the unit cost by up to several per cent. On national scale, the cost decrement can be from millions of euros to tens of millions only by small improvements Notable variation in productive machine hours and harvested volumes tells about possibilities for improvements. These can be found by developing the operational environment together with customers and by assessing own practices and attitudes openly and critically. Wood procurement companies in general have the will to improve and develop and together with the forest industry’s increasing need for timber, this provides improvement possibilities for the whole chain of wood procurement.