British Columba (BC) is currently experiencing major issues in the pulp and paper sector, such as the shortage of experienced drivers, inefficient transportation planning and the high transportation cost of raw material. A more efficient supply chain management in the pulp and paper industry is needed.
Fattane Nadimi, from the University of British Columba, has sought to improve the efficiency of truck transportation in a recent study. Her research modelled truck transportation of wood chips to a typical BC pulp mill to help assist in optimising logistical decisions.
Fattane looked at a network that transports wood chips from a number of sawmills to a pulp mill with limited truck uploading capacity and developed an optimisation model to consider wood chip production at supplier sawmills, its transportation and uploading at the pulp mill.
Her results show that the truck waiting times could be reduced by 7% and the fleet size could be reduced by one-third. These findings display the overall benefits that arise from using optimised solutions for wood chip trucking rather than experience based alternatives.
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