Annual timber procurement planning with bucking decisions

Abstract

The problem we consider is a practical multiple-period wood procurement planning problem in the Eastern Canadian context. This is a difficult forest management problem because it integrates two related problems: the forest bucking problem and the multi-facility supply planning problem. The choice of the sites to harvest in each period and how to harvest them affects the assortments provided to the mills. We must decide which sites to harvest in each period so that the demands of the various wood-processing facilities are satisfied. Moreover, we must indicate how to harvest the different sites according to the bucking priority list and the quantity of harvested logs to transport from each site to supply several mills. In this paper, we extend the procurement model presented by Dems et al. to more detailed multiple-period planning. We develop a mixed integer linear model, that we solve first using directly CPLEX. Then, we propose two heuristic approaches that quickly generate an initial feasible schedule of forest sites. This feasible schedule is then used to help CPLEX find a solution for the entire problem in less computation time. Computational results on data set from an Eastern Canadian forestry company are presented.