Long-range timber supply planning for a vertically integrated paper mill

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2007.08.033 Byline: Philip C. Jones, Jeffrey W. Ohlmann Keywords: OR in agriculture; Forest economics; Normal forest; Regulated forest; Newsvendor model; Forestry supply chain management Abstract: We consider a vertically integrated papermaking operation composed of an integrated pulp and paper mill with its regional supply network. Considering land procurement and harvest rotation as strategic decision variables, we construct a model to establish a long-range timber supply plan that minimizes the total discounted cost of meeting annual virgin wood fiber demand over an infinite horizon. Under appropriate assumptions on costs and storage, the land procurement and harvest rotation decisions are separable with harvest rotation being determined via a forest economics-type equation and land procurement being determined by a newsvendor-type equation. Author Affiliation: Department of Management Sciences, 108 John Pappajohn Business Building, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1994, United States Article History: Received 18 January 2006; Accepted 24 August 2007