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Shrinkage and swelling characteristics of wood as a hygroscopic material affect negatively its effective utilization for a variety of applications. Heat treatment is widely used for minimizing the negative effects of volumetric swelling and shrinkage of wood. The present study aims to develop artificial neural network (ANN) models for predicting volumetric swelling and shrinkage of heat treated woods. For this purpose, wood samples were subjected to heat treatment at varying temperatures (130, 150, 170 and 190 ºC) for varying durations (2, 4, 6 and 8 h). Experimental results have showed that volumetric swelling and shrinkage of wood decreased by heat treatment. Then, neural networks models capable of predicting the swelling and shrinkage of the treated woods were developed based on the resulting data. It was seen that ANN models allowed volumetric swelling and shrinkage of such woods to predict successfully with a limited set of experimental data. This approach was able to predict volumetric swelling and shrinkage of wood with a mean absolute percentage error equal to 2,599% and 2,647% in test phase, respectively. The developed models might thus serve as a robust tool to predict volumetric swelling and shrinkage with less number of experiments.

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The present study investigates the infl uence of performance appraisal on employee motivation and productivity in Turkish forest products industry using a structural equation model. The questionnaires prepared for this purpose were applied to 432 people that work in 14 forest products industry businesses operating throughout Turkey. A total of nine hypotheses were established to determine the relationship between performance appraisal and employee motivation and productivity. The results indicated that fi ve hypotheses were accepted, while four of them were rejected. In the light of the fi ndings of this study, it may be generally said that the effect of performance appraisal on employee motivation and productivity was high. In other words, performance appraisal was found to be a major factor on employee motivation and productivity. The present study is expected to help managers and decision makers in selecting suitable motivating factors in order to retain and satisfy their employees. Consequently, this study will fi ll an important gap in the area of performance appraisal in the forest products industry by structural equation modeling and presents the opportunity for further studies.