The Impact of Industrial Context on Procurement, Management and Development of Harvesting Services: A Comparison of Two Swedish Forest Owners Associations
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Industrial Contexts for Operations Management
1.2. Outsourcing of Harvesting Services
1.2.1. Outsourcing Decisions
1.2.2. Outsourcing Design
1.3. Scope and Aim
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Interviews
FOA without its own mills | FOA with its own mills | Functions in focus | Number of respondents | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Region office 1 1 manager | Region office 2 1 manager | Head office 2 managers | Order/Purchase/Production | 4 | |||
District 1 | District 2 | District 1 | District 2 | District 1 | District 2 | Purchase/Harvesting | 6 |
Production manager | Production manager | Production manager | Production manager | Production manager | Production manager | ||
Contractor | Contractor | Contractor | Contractor | Contractor | Contractor | Harvesting | 6 |
Total number of respondents | 16 |
Firm strategy | Supply strategies | Functions in focus for the interview | |
---|---|---|---|
Perspective | Processes and decisions | ||
Business goals | Strategic perspective | To be discussed | Order/Purchase/Production |
What? Why? | Long-term horizon | ||
Organization | Tactical perspective | To be discussed | Order/Purchase/Harvesting |
How to? | Medium-term horizon | ||
Implementation | Operational perspective | To be discussed | Purchase/Harvesting |
Doing it | Short-term horizon |
2.2. Function Modeling
2.3. Analysis
3. Results
3.1. The Context Models
3.1.1. A General Context Diagram
3.1.2. Strategic Activities
3.1.3. Tactical Activities
3.1.4. Operational Activities
3.1.5. Summary of Differences
Perspective | Planning step | Frequency | FOA with its own mills | FOA without its own mills | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Planning occurence & concern | Planning occurence & concern | |||||
Supply | Demand | Supply | Demand | |||
Strategic | Strategy | 5 years | X | X | ||
Business plan (BP) | 3–5 years | X | X | X | X | |
BP revision | 1 year | X | X | |||
Tactical | Goal-based plan | 1 year | X | X | X | X |
Demand-based plan | ½ year | X | X | |||
Supply prognosis | 4 months | X | ||||
Adjusted demand plan | 1–2 months | X | ||||
Delivery plan | 1 month | X | X | X | X | |
Operational | Adjustments | <1 month | X | X | ||
Number of occurrences | 6 | 8 | 3 | 5 |
3.2. The Detailed Model
3.2.1. The Harvest Wood Function
3.2.2. The Adapt Harvesting Fleet Activity
3.2.3. The Develop Activity
3.2.4. The Manage Harvesting Operations Activity
3.2.5. Summary of Differences
Activity | Sub-activity | Observed differences | |
---|---|---|---|
Between FOAs | Within FOAs | ||
Prognsticate | Not detailed | ||
Adapt harvesting fleet | Estimate need | 2 more controls (strategy & bi-monthly plan adjustments) in the FOA with its own mills | |
Procure | Varying perceptions of contractor shortage, resulting in varying proportions of long-term contracts | ||
Varying use of operations specific machinery | |||
Follow-up performance | Varying descriptions of time spent on follow-up and development activities, depending on time required in operational management | ||
Develop | Standardized protocol template for business development meetings in the FOA with its own mills | ||
1 more sub-activity (central compilation of development needs) in the FOA with its own mills | |||
Follow-up outcome | Not detailed | ||
Manage harvesting operations | Schedule | Contract price period was a control to the Schedule activity in the FOA without its own mills, as a consequence of the necessity to ensure a profit margin between price paid for wood and price received for mill deliveries | Variations in the balancing of consideration to internal efficiency needs versus contractors’ efficiency needs when scheduling harvesting operations |
Order | Some productions managers gave no preliminary harvestings instructions to contractors, to avoid planning errors | ||
Varying descriptions of re-planning needs, correspondingly influencing the possible time horizon to provide definite harvesting instructions | |||
Some contractors communicated a need of timely instructions to enable proper preparatory planning | |||
Supervise | Varying routines for production reporting |
4. Discussion
4.1. Contextual Differences
4.2. Procurement of Harvesting Services
4.3. Management of Harvesting Operations
4.4. Development of Harvesting Services
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Erlandsson, E. The Impact of Industrial Context on Procurement, Management and Development of Harvesting Services: A Comparison of Two Swedish Forest Owners Associations. Forests 2013, 4, 1171-1198. https://doi.org/10.3390/f4041171
Erlandsson E. The Impact of Industrial Context on Procurement, Management and Development of Harvesting Services: A Comparison of Two Swedish Forest Owners Associations. Forests. 2013; 4(4):1171-1198. https://doi.org/10.3390/f4041171
Chicago/Turabian StyleErlandsson, Emanuel. 2013. "The Impact of Industrial Context on Procurement, Management and Development of Harvesting Services: A Comparison of Two Swedish Forest Owners Associations" Forests 4, no. 4: 1171-1198. https://doi.org/10.3390/f4041171