Agility capabilities in wood procurement systems: a literature synthesis

Abstract

The ability of a firm to detect changing demands and efficiently respond to them can be described as agility. The past decade has seen a significant rise in the literature on the concept of agility. It has been identified as a requirement for growth and competitiveness. However, a review of the related literature reveals that the concept has scarcely been studied in the forest industry context. This study contributes to filling this gap. More specifically, we contextualize agility in wood procurement systems (WPSs). A WPS includes upstream processes and actors in the forest-products supply chain, responsible for procuring and delivering raw materials from the forest to the mill. We first identify the capabilities a WPS needs to possess in order to enable agility. Next, we review the literature in the WPS domain to search for evidence of these capabilities. It was found that aspects of the practices embodied in agility capabilities have already been proposed in the WPS literature but without explicit reference to agility. However, opportunities to further improve the agility of WPSs were also identified. It is suggested that future research focus on determining optimal levels of investments in agility in order to maximize supply-chain profits.

Keywords:

• wood procurement
• forest operations
• forest products supply chain
• agility enablers

Acknowledgements

This study was made possible through financial support from ForValueNet, the strategic network on forest management for value-added products of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We also acknowledge the FOR@C research consortium of Univesité Laval for providing essential resources to undertake this study. We wish to thank Dr. Riadh Azouzi for his constructive comments on an earlier draft. We would also like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and improvements to this manuscript.