Indisputable Key

The introduction, base for, and finalisation of work – WP3 – Assessment of supply chain performance

The overall objectives of this WP are to
• provide integrated metrics and methodologies to assess and improve the quality-related, economic and environmental performance using both a supply chain perspective and a life cycle perspective
• develop tools for holistic management of the supply chain that integrates product quality, process economy, supply chain performance and environmental impact in a multi-objective framework.

This work will also be used to measure the total impact of the new approach developed in the Indisputable key project, i.e. to quantify the benefits of the work with respect to product quality, economic and environmental performance and to suggest directions for further work. The quality of wood products is influenced by many different groups of properties of the wood material, such as:
• biological variations due to growing conditions, e.g. fibre length, knottiness, growth ring width.
• geometrical properties, e.g. diameter, taper and length.
• logistic factors, e.g. freshness and transportation conditions

There exist an extensive amount of models for different properties and different wood species from many different sources. Many models have not been adaptable commercially, due to their need for information of raw material parameters from the forest that have not yet been accessible in the production chain. New traceability systems with data collection, such as the one developed in this project, will greatly increase the possibilities to validate and improve such models, as well as putting them into practical use, which will facilitate a better allocation of wood based on the best suited properties for the end product. Existing scientific material regarding variations in wood properties will be analysed and the possibility of improving relations and implementation in the Indisputable key systems shall be assessed. Typical properties of interest are knot structure, strength, density, fibre properties etc. but also more geometrical properties like diameter, taper, length etc., and logistic parameters such as time of cutting, storage time and so on shall be assessed.
Improved use of wood property models will increase the economic and environmental performance of wood, since the production resources will decrease, while the quality, and thus value, of the end product will increase.

Based on the data related to the origin and processing history of the material, environmental and economic KPIs can be calculated that quantify the performance of the supply chain. The KPIs will be defined to be compatible with product quality measures to facilitate holistic supply chain management. A life-cycle perspective is employed and the KPIs are based on life-cycle inventories (LCI) and life-cycle cost (LCC) data respectively. Obtaining such data is a substantial effort. The possibility to calculate environmental KPIs on-line and in real-time, leads to completely new possibilities for environmental consideration; environmental effects of both long-term planning and the daily operation of processes in the wood product value chain can now be easily quantified.
The huge amount of data collected from the forest product supply chain can be difficult to interpret and visualise, which means it is very difficult to get an overview and to extract the relevant information. Methods based on multivariate statistics are efficient for the analysis of large data sets, and can be used to better utilise the data captured through the new system, by transforming it into useful information, visualising patterns and facilitating learning from historical data. This, in turn, will also enable using the data for process control, quality control and disturbance cause analysis.
The models developed, covering the full supply chain, will help quantify where the benefits appear and thus help estimate "downstream" benefits from "upstream" investments or changes. The models can be used to provide a "value" of the upstream data, which can provide input to the sharing mechanism, i.e. the “price” of the data accompanying an intermediate product (log, board etc.).
During the last part of the project, the quality measures and KPIs defined and quantified will be used to assess the overall impact of the project on the performance of the wood supply chain. The material is valuable as an internal project benchmark, but will also be used in dissemination and as a basis for a possible further commercialisation of the project results.
The major relations and dependencies between this WP and the other WPs are:
• Data requirements. The modelling work is dependent on data from the different parts of the supply chain. This will be supplied through WP6 (Software Modules for Integration) continuously during the project. Initially, before data is generated in this project, data from previous projects will be used. The databases that will be used as data supply for modelling are designed and implemented in WP6. The content of the data communication between systems is defined in WP2 (Standards and Architectures).
• The method developed (primarily in task 3.6) have a connection with the software development in WP6 (Software Modules for Integration), since they may be implemented there.
• The initial analysis (task 3.1) and final assessment of the project (task 3.7) requires input from all other WPs.
• The models developed will be used in the demonstration activities in WP8 (Demonstration of systems and benefits).