Forestry Entrepreneurs — Research on High Performance Business Model

Over the last 30 years, the forest industry in Eastern Canada has undergone a radical transformation, from a model where larger forestry businesses operated their own production equipment to a model where harvesting, transport, and forest road construction are awarded to contractors. This change in strategy on part of the large corporations has created new start-up opportunities for many forest entrepreneurs. Their dependency on a single large client (wood buyer), however, could hinder entrepreneurial behavior. This study aims to examine the forest Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) population, identify the factors that stimulate their performance despite a business environment that may be deemed unfavorable, and draw an overall picture of the existing situation. An analysis of 535 questionnaires filled by forest machine owners suggests that SMEs with four employees or more show better performance results than those with three or fewer employees, considered very small enterprises (VSEs), essentially because these businesses are typically able to work more weeks in a year. Their managers use a significantly higher number of tools to measure performance and attribute greater importance to management duties. The results have enabled us to identify certain performance factors, but suggest that further research is needed to better understand the underlying causes of contract assignment and the relationships that develop between SME managers and large forest product companies

Exploring new forms of intermediation in the forest value chain

This paper proposes a method to restructure the forest value chain using intermediaries when a wider range of forest values should be managed for several stakeholders. This method leads to the definition of the strategic vision of the intermediary, including its value proposition and its required competencies, assuming that actors in the value chain are prepared to revise their business approach to enable effective collaboration and knowledge sharing. The method is used to support management of public forests in the Province of Quebec, in Eastern Canada. Basically, the intermediary, referred to as the integrator-supplier (IS) in the application case, enables several stakeholders, including the government, the forest industry, regional authorities, recreation organizations, and First Nations, to cnmmunicate, to set compatible goals, and to synchronize their activities. These activities and interactions must all be effectively carried out to maximize the overall benefits of forest management. Three critical issues for successful development of the IS are identified. The results present functional descriptions of seven development scenarios for effective use of intermediation in forest value chains

The Effect of Customer-Contractor Alignment in Forest Harvesting Services on Contractor Profitability and the Risk for Relationship Breakdown

In forest operations, the interface between forest companies and harvesting contractors is of special importance, considering that it is the first link in the forest industry's supply chains. Supply operations account for a significant share of the final costs of wood products (up to 50%). This study investigates the effect of customer-contractor alignment on contractors' profit margins and on the risk for business relationship breakdown. Alignment is empirically measured for a Swedish forest company and 74 of its harvesting contractors, who were monitored during a four-year period. Two measures of alignment are employed: (1) the customer-perceived value of the contractors' services; and (2) the contractors' perceived alignment with the forest company expectations. Results indicate that the two measures of alignment are largely independent from each other, and that customer-perceived value affects both contractor profitability and the risk of relationship breakdown. Conflict between the two parties and lack of trust for the customer were found to be common complaints among contractors who ceased working for the studied forest company. Consequently, customer-contractor alignment should be considered a key objective by contractors who strive for business success, and also by forest companies who wish to improve their supply chain performance

Comité National Français de Géodésie et de Géophysique : rapport quadriennal 1991-1994

Au cours de quatre campagnes successives (1990-1993), l'expérience EPSAT-Niger a permis d'acquérir un ensemble de données pluviographiques et radar sans équivalent à ce jour sur l'Afrique de l'Ouest. Un panorama rapide des données acquises et des conditions climatiques qui ont prévalu durant ces 4 années d'expérience est donné ici, permettant de dégager quelques éléments dominants de la climatologie des précipitations au Sahel. Il est suivi d'une description des travaux menés en vue d'obtenir des estimations de lames d'eau au sol plus fiables sur des surfaces dont la taille peut varier selon les besoins des hydrologues et des modélisateurs du climat. Une analyse des champs pluviométriques associés aux systèmes convectifs de méso-échelle est ensuite présentée, montrant qu'ils sont constitués de structures emboîtées dont la trace se retrouve jusque dans les cartes de cumuls saisonniers. Néanmoins la possibilité de calculer des statistiques pertinentes pour ces structures est limitée par la nature intégrée des données fournies aussi bien par le radar que par les pluviographes. Un effort majeur reste donc à accomplir pour prendre en compte la distorsion introduite par ces effets d'intégration et développer des procédures d'estimation des paramètres de modèles de champs pluviométriques sahéliens. (Résumé d'auteur

Multiple-round timber auction design and simulation

This paper presents a multiple-round timber auction simulation, developed in order to study various configurations of auction design. In this study, simultaneous sequential timber auctions are modelled and analysed using agent-based simulation technology. As there are many individual items in the auction to be sold, the auction designer defines several rounds that are sequential at pre-defined intervals. At each round, the auction designer announces several simultaneous auctions. Since bidders are offered different items at each round, a mathematical linear programing model for selecting the best set of items to bid for is presented. Different bidding patterns are simulated and compared in various setup configurations. The most advanced of these strategies are adaptive and use agent-learning capability. The comparisons include the success rate of winning the auction and the winning price per m3. This study suggests an efficient bidding pattern for bidders to bid in order to achieve to their goal and increase their profit. Similarly, in order to increase profit, the auctioneer (i.e. the government) needs to control several auction parameters including the number of auctions per year, the lot size, the auction periodicity, and the number of bidders. This study also suggests parameters configurations that to maximise revenue for the auctioneer

Time-based combinatorial auction for timber allocation and delivery coordination

The timber auction system currently used in the province of Québec, Canada, is a single unit auction, in which timber users bid on the entire forest stands located within a specific area. In this procurement system, timber users (i.e., winners) are responsible for harvesting the entire stands and for reselling undesirable timber species to others. In order to improve the limits of this system, this paper proposes a sustainable auction system, referred to as time-based timber combinatorial auction. In this approach, time is not part of the definition of the goods for sale. It is used to valuate the good for sale with respect to their expected delivery period. Therefore, this system aims to simultaneously allocate multiple goods, or products in mixed forest stand, to multiple winners, and address the coordination of timber deliveries to their winners. The proposed timber combinatorial auction provides an open access allocation of timber, based on its intrinsic economic value, while allowing the Ministry of natural resources to exercise high standard for environmentally friendly forest operations. From a logistic point of view, a sensitive analysis is conducted in order to compare the proposed time-based combinatorial auction with a combinatorial auction with no delivery coordination. Both models are compared according to bidders' and seller's time flexibility. Experimental results illustrate the impact (i.e., cost) of delivery coordination on total revenue due to loss of value when time preference is not fully satisfied. This cost evaluation can then be used as an upper bound of the cost of coordination, when delivery coordination must be manually negotiated among multi-stakeholders

Overview of the current use of levosimendan in France: a prospective observational cohort study

Abstract Background Following the results of randomized controlled trials on levosimendan, French health authorities requested an update of the current use and side-effects of this medication on a national scale. Method The France-LEVO registry was a prospective observational cohort study reflecting the indications, dosing regimens, and side-effects of levosimendan, as well as patient outcomes over a year. Results The patients included ( n = 602) represented 29.6% of the national yearly use of levosimendan in France. They were treated for cardiogenic shock ( n = 250, 41.5%), decompensated heart failure ( n = 127, 21.1%), cardiac surgery-related low cardiac output prophylaxis and/or treatment ( n = 86, 14.3%), and weaning from veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation ( n = 82, 13.6%). They received 0.18 ± 0.07 µg/kg/min levosimendan over 26 ± 8 h. An initial bolus was administered in 45 patients (7.5%), 103 (17.1%) received repeated infusions, and 461 (76.6%) received inotropes and or vasoactive agents concomitantly. Hypotension was reported in 218 patients (36.2%), atrial fibrillation in 85 (14.1%), and serious adverse events in 17 (2.8%). 136 patients (22.6%) died in hospital, and 26 (4.3%) during the 90-day follow-up. Conclusions We observed that levosimendan was used in accordance with recent recommendations by French physicians. Hypotension and atrial fibrillation remained the most frequent side-effects, while serious adverse event potentially attributable to levosimendan were infrequent. The results suggest that this medication was safe and potentially associated with some benefit in the population studied

Extending the classic wood supply model to anticipate industrial fibre consumption

The classic wood supply optimisation model maximises even-flow harvest levels, and implicitly assumes infinite fibre demand. In many jurisdictions, this modelling assumption is a poor fit for actual fibre consumption, which is often a species-unbalanced subset of total fibre allocation. Failure to anticipate this bias in volume and species mix of industrial wood fibre consumption has been linked to increased risk of wood supply failure. In particular, we examine the distributed wood supply planning problem, which is a variant of the general wood supply planning problem where the roles of forest owner and fibre consumer are played by independent agents (e.g. wood supply planning on public forest land in Canada, where government stewards control wood supply and forest products industry firms consume the fibre). We use agency theory to describe the source of antagonism between public forest land owners (the principal) and industrial fibre consumers (the agent). We show that the distributed wood supply planning problem can be modelled more accurately using a bilevel formulation, and present an extension of the classic wood supply optimisation model which explicitly anticipates industrial fibre consumption behaviour. The general case of the bilevel wood supply optimisation problem is NP-hard, non-linear, and non-convex-it is difficult to solve to global optimality. By imposing certain restrictions on agent network topology, we show that the general case can be decomposed into convex sub-problems. We present a solution methodology that can solve this special case to global optimality, and compare output and solution times of classic and bilevel model formulations using a computational experiment on a realistic dataset. Experimental results show that solution time for the bilevel problem is comparable to solution time for the classic single-level problem, and that the bilevel formulation can mitigate risk of wood supply failure