%0 Articles
%T Creating value through advanced silvicultural services
%A Kiljunen, Nuutti
%D 2006
%J Dissertationes Forestales
%V 2006
%N 17
%R doi:10.14214/df.17
%U http://dissertationesforestales.fi/article/1800
%X A scenario study was used for creating alternative operational environments for wood production in Finland in the future. The most promising research topics in the alternative scenarios were then analyzed and summarized. The alienation of non-industrial private forest landowners from practical forestry, the need to foster entrepreneurship, and the need to improve cost-efficiency in silvicultural service provision were found to be the most important background factors. Also, counteracting the effects of threatening lack of labour for silvicultural works safeguards the future of wood production. Based on these results, theories on creating value through services were applied in order to develop a service chain for stand establishment and management of young stands of Norway spruce.
The first step in the service chain was that of quality-guaranteed stand establishment service, where the establishment of a tree stand is sold to the customer as a total service commodity. The idea is that the service provider bears the risk of failure of stand establishment up to a certain stand age. Adequate premiums for covering the risk of failure were calculated.
The second step involved looking into the possibilities of classifying established Norway spruce stands according to their potential for emerging need to undergo early tending within six years after planting. Reliable prediction of the need for early tending turned out to be impossible, despite the use of state-of-the-art classification algorithms.
The third step was to study the effect of timing of tending on the consumption of working time in young Norway spruce stands. The common problem of great variation between sample plots in time studies was avoided by introducing a new method. Just a brief two-year time span between the alternative timing points of pre-commercial thinning resulted in marked changes in the consumption of working time. The simulated effects on the further development of the stands did not differ much from one another.
The effective use of examples of such services, as presented in this study, requires information and communication technology applications for the management of stand and operational information.