Högskolan i Skövde

The wood supply chain is complex, involving numerous stakeholders, processes, and logistical challenges to ensure the timely and accurate delivery of wood products to customers. Variation in road accessibility caused by weather further compounds operational complexity. This paper delves into the challenges faced by forestry managers and explores how simulation and optimization techniques can address these challenges. By integrating simulation with multi-objective optimization algorithms, this research aims to optimize harvest scheduling, addressing multiple conflicting objectives including maximizing service level and throughput, while minimizing lead time and delivery deviation measured as a loss function. The findings underscore the potential of such a simulation-based multi-objective optimization approach to enhance both delivery performance and robustness in wood supply chains, providing valuable insights for decision-making. Ultimately, this research contributes to advancing the understanding of how simulation and optimization techniques can bolster the efficiency and resilience of the forestry industry to face evolving challenges.