Cutting uncertain stock and vehicle routing in a sustainability forestry harvesting problem

Abstract

Sustainable forest management is concerned with the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. As a contribution to the field, this paper combines the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) (in which the vehicles are harvesters) with the Multiple Stock Size Cutting Stock Problem under uncertainty (in which the stock is logs). We present an Integer Linear Program that dynamically combines the cutting of the uncertain stock with vehicle routing, and uses it to address real-life problems. In experiments on real data from the forestry harvesting industry, we show that it outperforms a commonly used metaheuristic algorithm.