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, Kiljunen N. (2014). Labour consumption models applied to motor-manual pre-commercial thinning in Finland. Silva Fennica vol. 48 no. 2 article id 982. 14 p. Highlights• When a young stand grows and gets older, the work time needed to make pre-commercial thinning increases. The stands of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and hardwoods (Betula spp.) required an additional 8.2%, 5.2%, and 3.3% work-time per year, respectively. AbstractLabour models were developed to estimate the time required to Pre-Commercially Thin (PCT) with a clearing saw 4-to 20-year-old stands of the main commercial tree species in Finland. Labour (i.e., work-time consumption) was estimated from the density and stem diameter of the removal of 448 stands via an existing work productivity function. The removal based estimator attained was used as the basis for a priori mixed linear regression models. The main finding was that when a young stand grows and gets older, the work time needed to make a PCT increases. The stands of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and hardwoods (Betula spp.) required an additional 8.2%, 5.2%, and 3.3% work-time per year, respectively. Site fertility also played a role in that the most fertile site (mesic OMT) had an estimated labour requirement 114% higher than that for dryish VT. We also note that, per unit area, small stands require less labour than large ones and soil preparation method had a minor effect on the labour estimate. The stands which had previously gone through PCT were separately analysed. In those stands, the only significant variable concerning the labour estimate was age. The a priori models described here can help foresters to develop economic management programmes and issue quotes for forestry services.

A scenario study was used for creating alternative operational environments for wood production in Finland in the future. The most promising research topics in the alternative scenarios were then analyzed and summarized. The alienation of non-industrial private forest landowners from practical forestry, the need to foster entrepreneurship, and the need to improve cost-efficiency in silvicultural service provision were found to be the most important background factors. Also, counteracting the effects of threatening lack of labour for silvicultural works safeguards the future of wood production. Based on these results, theories on creating value through services were applied in order to develop a service chain for stand establishment and management of young stands of Norway spruce. The first step in the service chain was that of quality-guaranteed stand establishment service, where the establishment of a tree stand is sold to the customer as a total service commodity. The idea is that the service provider bears the risk of failure of stand establishment up to a certain stand age. Adequate premiums for covering the risk of failure were calculated. The second step involved looking into the possibilities of classifying established Norway spruce stands according to their potential for emerging need to undergo early tending within six years after planting. Reliable prediction of the need for early tending turned out to be impossible, despite the use of state-of-the-art classification algorithms. The third step was to study the effect of timing of tending on the consumption of working time in young Norway spruce stands. The common problem of great variation between sample plots in time studies was avoided by introducing a new method. Just a brief two-year time span between the alternative timing points of pre-commercial thinning resulted in marked changes in the consumption of working time. The simulated effects on the further development of the stands did not differ much from one another. The effective use of examples of such services, as presented in this study, requires information and communication technology applications for the management of stand and operational information.

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Productivity and costs of packing container seedlings were studied in a mechanised line for packing and disinfecting seedling trays. The hypothesis was that adequate cost-efficiency could be achieved when some common principles of mechanisation were applied. Results indicated that the unit costs are lower than those of manual packing, if these principles were applied and the annual number of packed seedlings exceeded 6 million. However, most of the nurseries in Finland are still too small to gain a real advantage from large-scale production.

In Finland, the number of nurseries has been decreasing year by year, and it seems probable that in the near future this trend will continue. It can be assumed that greater economies of scale could also be achieved in Finnish seedling production by enlarging the size of production units [9,10]. The management strategies used by a nursery company for long-distance seedling transportation were compared with different allocations of seedling production among nurseries. To determine the optimal transportation costs in different strategies for seedling production and planning of long-distance transportation, linear programming (LP) was applied. To manage spatial information, a geographical information system (GIS) was used. The current development towards seedling transportation managed by nursery companies seems to have marked advantages in the cost-effectiveness of transportation. The relative improvement in cost-effectiveness caused by centralized transportation strategy (CTS) compared to decentralized transportation strategy (DTS), which is the mostly used strategy in seedling transportation planning in Finland, varied from 13.0% to 36.5%, depending on the number of nurseries and the degree of specialization of production among them. These results will be useful for nursery companies and forest owners' associations (FOAs) when they evaluate the cost effects of production allocation, product specialization and systems of transportation management.

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