A business plan is an essential tool in starting and managing a new or expanding venture. It is not only a comprehensive gathering of ideas and information on the potential business and its feasibility, but it is also a way of monitoring that business, once established. Business plans are important...
The wood-based building products industry has experienced significant turbulence over the past several decades as a function of multiple forces including among others globalization, product and process innovation, and shifting customer and consumer interest and demands. Collectively, these changes have challenged the historical tenets which have defined industry strategy and...
Due to growing global competition, especially in the last decade, the United States wood and wood-based industries have suffered significant market share losses. The wood industry in Germany is facing similar challenges. To stay competitive in an increasingly global marketplace, many wood manufacturers are adopting new management/manufacturing approaches. Lean manufacturing...
Forest certification—or, as it is sometimes called, green certification—aims to identify forestland that is managed to meet agreed-upon standards and, sometimes, to label products originating from those forests. The underlying goal of forest certification is to promote forest practices that are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable over the long term....
This thesis is a collection of four submitted manuscripts that present
methods to assist forest ecosystem service managers wanting to develop
operational sampling, monitoring, and production plans for a set of
specific quantifiable ecosystem services, which are formulated as a
series of general multi-objective optimization problems. The problems
are solved...
The Northwest forest products industry has been under severe economic pressure for the past several years. Many Northwest forest products companies have gone out of business entirely and others have closed portions of their operations. This monograph describes how one company has instituted a productivity improvement program to reduce its...
There has been an increasing realization of the value of innovativeness, the orientation toward innovation, for firms thriving to gain competitive edge. The US forest products industry is no different in this respect and many companies have active initiatives to bring about creativity from their own employees. At the same...
Business is a social institution and society has always designated a role for
business which has been undergoing changes with changing societal values and
paradigms. Thus while business has always had some responsibilities, the modern
connotation of the words corporate social responsibility commonly refers to business
assuming responsibilities in economic,...