Professor Sophie D’Amours, fonder of the FORAC research consortium leads the research program of Value chains and business models for a competitive, profitable and responsible forest sector. This program aims to strengthen the capacity of business and government to make strategic design decisions for their value chains to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for traditional and emerging markets. Strategic design is here defined as the coordinated deployment of a combination of assets, strategies and coordination mechanisms to meet the various objectives (sometimes conflicting), for the stakeholders in a highly regulated social, environmental and economical environment.

Professor Luc LeBel, director of the consortium, leads two initiatives related to the theme of supply system from the forest to the mills:

1) Collaborative Planning of Integrated Wood Supply Systems

2) Engineering the integrated wood supply system for a more competitive Canadian forest products industry

These research programs are designed to improve the performance of activities prior to the wood processing in factories. Both proposals are closely associated. While the first initiative will study and develop planning models and collaborative operating at the network level, the second will focus on optimizing specific processes that make up the supply system.

Professor Jonathan Gaudreault, co-director of the consortium, leads the research program entitled Agile Operations Management for Market-driven Wood Processing Industry. The aim is to develop a set of processes, methods and tools to aid agile decision making in sawmill and second transformation factories. The focus will be on the development of real-time planning systems to enable managers and planners react to the conditions of rapidly changing markets.