An integrated approach for solving the bucking and routing problems in the forest industry

MONTAGNA JORGE MARCELO; BORDON MAXIMILIANO RAMON; CORSANO GABRIELA

Bahía Blanca

Congreso; International Conference of Production Research-Americas (ICPR-Americas); 2020

Universidad Nacional del Sur

In the forest supply chain, decisions related to bucking (cross sectional cuts) and distribution (vehicle routing) activities are usually considered separately and in different planning horizons. This separation between closely related problems gives rise to suboptimal solutions that, if they are simultaneously considered, could bring significant benefits. A tight coordination between the type and amount of material to be harvested and the actually material required to satisfy the daily demand would allow improvements in the efficiency of the production system (both in the forest and in the plant) and significant cost savings. To address this problem, in this work, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that simultaneously considers both decisions is presented. Through a case study, the performance of the developed model is analyzed and the respective conclusions are detailed.