Failure to sort logs prior to their transportation to a mill can result in a loss ofvalue in the forest products supply chain?for unsorted, higher value logs can be used ina low-value product where lower valued logs would otherwise suffice. To capture thislost value, a log sort-yard facility is used in the forest products supply chain. The sortyardis located between multiple forest locations (supplies) and multiple mills (demands)and functions to grade, scale, buck and sort logs before they are trans-shipped to millswhere the demand for their value is highest.The problem of selecting the location of a sort-yard has been modeled by otherresearchers, but prior models have assumed that the locations of both log supplies andmills were fixed. In reality, the locations of log supplies are not fixed, but are selectedusing a multi-period, tactical harvest-scheduling model. The objective of this work is toformulate, test, and evaluate a model that simultaneously selects the location of cutblocksand the location of a sort-yard over time.This prototype model was tested on a small, toy data-set. Three scenarios wereevaluated: a no sort-yard scenario, a fixed sort-yard scenario, and a scenario allowingthe sort-yard to change location over time. Results revealed that the selection of cutblocks was highly sensitive to the changes in the scenarios, and that the approach ofsimultaneous optimization can lead to improved planning in the forest products supplychain.
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