Added-value innovation of forest biomass supply chains

Abstract

The aim of this work was to study how process innovation can be applied in forest biomass supply chains for reducing costs to add value compared to traditional supply chains. The work consisted of four articles using alternative data and a variety of methods. The process innovation of forest biomass supply chains contains several possibilities. There is a need to identify which processes should be renewed incrementally or completely. The main innovation types determined by the case articles were divided into incremental, radical and network innovation. Achieving cost reduction was possible by innovating traditional forest biomass supply chain processes in a novel way in all cases. The case of network innovation however, presenting the cooperation of an entire supply chain with stakeholders by linking forest management and logistics business systems together in process innovation, provided the highest cost reduction, which can be seen as added value. This is because network innovation includes several structural holes with close connections between processes and systems that offer the possibility of finding more cost reduction potential for the entire supply chain. The main conclusion of this work is that it is not worth implementing innovation solely inside a company´s own activities, but opening the innovation process for the whole network of a supply chain is crucial. The methods presented in this work could be mainly applied in forest biomass supply chain innovation. The work enhanced the knowledge of innovation usage for forest biomass supply chains.

First-thinning harvesting alternatives for industrial or energy purposes based on regional Scots pine stand simulations in Finland

“…The profitability of producing forest biomass for energy purposes, however, has been less studied (Ahtikoski et al 2008;Heikkilä et al 2009;Karttunen 2006). Forest-management opportunities should be considered in the innovation process for all aspects of forest-biomass supply chains, to reveal the cost-reduction potential (Karttunen 2015). The aim of the study was to find the most cost-efficient process for small diameter wood, which was determined by using the following three aspects: 1.…”

Distribution, characteristics and potential of biomass-dense thinning forests in Sweden

“…liquid biofuels for the transport sector and bioplastics, and such industries are likely to be located close to, or integrated with, current industries (Bergström and Matisons 2014). Several studies (Röser 2012;Petty 2014;Karttunen 2015;Windisch 2015) have addressed ways to increase the efficiency of biomass supply chains from forest to industry. BDTF harvesting costs account for the largest shares of cost in these supply chains (Laitila 2008;Laitila et al 2010) and thus some of the main barriers to high cost efficiency (Bergström and Di Fulvio 2014a), but they can be potentially reduced (Petty 2014).…”