An Integrated Tactical Planning Model for Margins-based Operations in the Forest Biorefinery

The biorefinery is generally recognized as a promising solution to transform the forestry industry. From a company perspective, at least two important decision-making elements need to be addressed: what is the best biorefinery configuration in terms of product/process portfolio, supply-chain network, capacity and manufacturing flexibility, and, for a defined biorefinery configuration, what supply-chain policies should be developed for achieving highest profitability in different market scenarios. In this paper, an integrated tactical planning model that can be used to help designing and managing forest biorefineries is presented. Test case results show that the model formulation is flexible enough to represent different biorefinery strategies and is fast enough to test several scenarios in an acceptable time.