Application of NETWORK 2000 in order to optimizing of truck transportation costs from forest to mills in Hyrcanian Forest

Forest operations consist of all technical and administrative processes to develop technical structures and facilities. Transportation, which is the stage where there is greatest potential for savings, is the subject of this thesis. The transportation of logs is performed in two stages; transport from forest to road sides and transport from road sides to terminals or customers (such as sawmills and pulp mills). The transportation of logs is very costly and it forms a high percentage, in the range of 15 to 20%, of the cost of timber. From the public’s perspective, logging trucks are perhaps the most visible sign of forest industry activity. The problem of planning the transportation from forest road sides to customers is complex. The goal of the transportation planning is to construct schedules for the trucks, such that all customer demands are satisfied on time with minimum trucking costs. From the forest industry’s perspective, transporting logs from the forest to the mill is becoming the largest single component of wood supply costs for many suppliers around the world. Since transportation costs make up a large proportion of the overall costs, even small increases in efficiency can significantly reduce costs. There is, therefore, considerable interest by forest industries worldwide in new work procedures, decision support systems that can lead to reductions in overall transport costs and numbers of trucks on the road. The research objective is to develop transportation plan to minimize haul costs and determine the cost of secondary transportation from forest management to mills. This study has been carried out in forest management in Hyrcanian forest and mill that consume wood products in north of Iran. In order to determine the total cost of secondary transportation at total 46 forest managements and 38 mills are considered and are investigated by using NETWORK2000. The results show that if all forest managements can send their products (logs, pulpwood, fuelwood, and swan-lumber) to all mills there are 1748 routes for wood transportation that among them minimum cost is 1600 Rial/m3 and maximum cost is 633600 Rial/m3. With use of NETWORK 2000, in total 368 routes choose among 1748 routes as optimal cost routes. In this case maximum cost is 380000 Rial/m3 and in this case 253600 Rial/m3 is saved and economized in transport costs