Particleboard is a commodity composite panel made from the residual materials of other wood products manufacturing companies. The industry operates on low profit margins and thus produces high volumes of differing panel grades. Slight inefficiencies over the course of a year can mean a significant loss in profit. Previous calculations...
Face checking in decorative maple veneered plywood panels is a significant
problem for hardwood plywood manufacturers, furniture makers, cabinetmakers, and consumers. Efforts made by panel producers and researchers to minimize checking conducted to-‐date have been limited, and produced contradictory results. In this study the impact of four manufacturing factors believed...
Dimensional stability of wood-based composites with changing moisture content remains an important challenge in the industry for many applications. Wood modification technologies have shown significant improvement in dimensional stability by altering the chemistry of the wood substrate, or by filling the available space in the wood microstructure that otherwise would...
By nature, most entrepreneurs are "doers" rather than "planners." At the same time, we know that successful organizations, regardless of their size, must plan for the future. High-level strategic planning such as establishing the long-term direction of the company is critical, but useless without a plan for implementation. This "implementation...
“Quality is Job 1”—this slogan is familiar to many people because it was used by Ford Motor Company for nearly 20 years. All businesses know the importance of quality—with respect to quality of products and quality of service. However, knowing specifically how to manage for quality is another matter. Here...
In recent years, the forest products industry has been
forced to cope with a supply of raw material that is
declining in both quality and quantity. In addition, log
prices are escalating rapidly. Because log costs may
represent as much as 90 percent of the overall production
costs of lumber...
Logging and forest thinning operations generate large amounts of residues in the form of small trees, branches and foliage that are usually left on the ground to decay or are burned. These resources are readily available, but it is uneconomical to remove them from the forest. The potential utilization of...
Co-located mills that share a log resource through a single merchandising
facility are challenged with the task of allocating the costs of joint-products in order to
determine log cost for each mill during a given period. While allocating joint-costs is
inherently arbitrary, some allocation must be made to include raw...
Human society is in continuous movement, physically or politically, willing or not . With digitalization and global warming, the pace of change has increased, and unpredictability has grown, challenging society and its institutions to evolve within a highly globalized and interactive environment, while facing even higher uncertainty in the future....
Export-oriented illegal logging has been recognized as a major global problem in environmental, social, and economic terms. It has been argued that export-oriented illegal logging does not benefit the community or government that should be benefited by its own natural resources. The emergence of policy initiatives targeting illegal logging could...
