Browsing by Author "Espinoza, Omar A."

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Business Management Practices for Small to Medium Sized Forest Products Firms
    Espinoza, Omar A.; Smith, Robert L. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Printing Services, 2015-11-04)
    Provides the information required to start a small forest products company by discussing the U.S. forest products industry, business management, strategic planning, business plans, and management of human resources, marketing, operations, and finances.
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    Business Management Practices for Small to Medium Sized Forest Products Firms
    Espinoza, Omar A.; Smith, Robert (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2015-06-01)
    The contents of this book are based on the authors’ management experience in the forest products industry and as educators and researchers. The idea for this effort arose from our interactions with industry, in which many owners and managers identified education in business!management and planning as a major need for companies.
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    Developing an Evaluation Program for Lumber Drying Operations in Bolivia
    Espinoza, Omar A. (Virginia Tech, 2006-05-01)
    The Bolivian forest products industry has experienced substantial growth during the last ten years. Exports of value-added products have largely replaced logs and green lumber, and raw materials for wood products have shifted to lesser used species. Important investment has taken place in lumber drying capacity, which unfortunately was not always accompanied by sound drying practices. Several non-governmental organizations, with U.S. financial aid, are currently supporting the industry with technical assistance. This project assists these efforts by assembling much needed information regarding lumber drying, and providing tools for performance measurement of drying practices. A survey was conducted among Bolivian companies to determine lumber drying capacity, technology and practices. Results showed a total drying capacity of 6,104,250 board feet in 167 kilns. Technology and practices used are highly variable. Thirty six percent of kilns are home-made, and 59% are European commercial brands. Upon completion of the survey, a set of analytical tools was developed and tested in six Bolivian firms. These tools were designed to systematically evaluate lumber drying operations and formulate actions for improvement. Equilibrium moisture content (EMC) during storage, manufacturing and shipping was monitored in plants located in three Bolivian cities and inside containerized shipments of wood products. Findings showed differences between EMC and lumber moisture content from -1% to 7%. Differences between EMC inside dry-lumber storage and processing facilities varied between 0% and 3.6% and were greatly influenced by facility configuration. Climate during shipment of wood products largely depended on packaging materials and methods, which attenuate sharp changes in ambient conditions. Monthly values for outdoor EMC for the main cities of Bolivia were calculated based on historic weather data and are reported.
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    Education Needs in the Forest Products Industry
    Espinoza, Omar A.; Smith, Robert (Virginia Tech, 2012)
    As part of the University of Minnesota’s Forest Products Management Development Institute service to its members and the industry in general, and in collaboration with Virginia Tech’s Center for Forest Products Business, a study of educational needs in the Forest Products Industry was conducted in the summer of 2012. This document summarizes the results from the study and compares the educational needs of forest products companies in Minnesota and Virginia.
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    Lean Manufacturing: Setup Time Reduction in Secondary Wood Manufacturing Facilities in North America
    Kucuk, Enis (Virginia Tech, 2016-06-28)
    Since the emergence and the subsequent evolution of lean manufacturing concepts, numerous enterprises of different scale and specialties have adopted lean tools and techniques in their facilities with varying success. In general, lean manufacturing related studies have been conducted on large manufacturing firms, such as the automotive industry. Yet, lean manufacturing tools and techniques are also suited for small enterprises. Thus, the main concern of this study is to investigate the success of set-up time reduction efforts (one of the steps needed to achieve 'one-piece flow') in secondary wood products manufacturing facilities on four woodworking machines (moulder, shaper, table saw, and band saw) based on firm size. The first objective of this research is to explore the results of the implementation of set-up time reduction efforts on selected woodworking machines in enterprises of varying size. It is assumed that company size is a major factor influencing the rate of set-up time improvements. To that end, the first hypothesis, which states that 'Small firms are less successful in reducing set-up time through set-up time reduction efforts than are large firms,' has been developed and supportive questions have been corresponding created. While statistical testing of the hypotheses created for this is not possible due to the limited number of participants, speculations about the possible outcome can be made. Thus, for hypothesis one, the data obtained does not show any sign of a relationship between a firm size and the success rate of set-up time reduction efforts. The second objective of this study is to investigate how a firm's productivity is affected by set-up time reduction efforts as related to firm size. With regards to some of the weaknesses of typical small manufacturing firms (e.g. having limited budget and resources, intuitive management strategies including lack of strategic planning), large firms, by and large, are expected to be more successful in increasing productivity through set-up time reduction. To that end, the goal is to investigate results of the set-up time reduction efforts in terms of productivity improvement in manufacturing facilities. With this in mind, the second hypothesis was proposed, which reads 'Small firms achieve lower productivity gains through set-up time reduction than do large firms.' For the second hypothesis, while no conclusive proof can be offered, no sign of a relationship between firm size and productivity gain through set-up time reduction could be found. Another objective of this study is to explore the success rate of set-up time activities on the four types of woodworking machines in industry facilities considering the training activities provided by manufacturers. The aim is to compare set-up time improvement performance of manufacturers between enterprises which trained their workers/operators and enterprises which did not train their employees. To understand the relationship between the scale of firms (and/or facilities) and training activities to improve set-ups, the third hypothesis, which reads 'Small firms are less concerned with set-up time reduction through training than are large firms,' has been developed. For the third hypothesis, while testing is not possible, it appears that there is no relationship between firm size and the level of concern for set-up time reduction through training activities. The final objective of this research is to investigate whether the secondary wood manufacturing firms studied experienced a bottleneck in their production due to the long set-up actions of machines. In order to accomplish this objective, the final hypothesis, 'In both, large and small firms, bottlenecks occur at machines with high set-up times,' has been developed. The final hypothesis cannot be accepted or rejected due to the limited number of responses obtained, set-up time was a frequently indicated explanation for the occurrence of production bottlenecks in secondary wood products manufacturing firms.
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    Quality Measurement in the Wood Products Supply Chain
    Espinoza, Omar A. (Virginia Tech, 2009-05-01)
    The purpose of this research is to learn about quality measurement practices in a wood products supply chain. According to the Supply Chain Management paradigm, companies no longer compete as individual entities, but as part of complex networks of suppliers and customers, linked together by flows of materials and information. Evidence suggests that a high degree of integration between supply chain members is essential to achieve superior market and financial performance. This study investigates the potential benefits from adopting supply chain quality management practices, focusing specifically on quality measurement. A case-study was conducted to accomplish the objectives of the research. An exemplary wood products supply chain was studied in great detail. The current state was compared with best practices, as reported in the literature. Supply chain quality metrics were used to assess current performance and a simulation model was developed to estimate the impact of changes in significant factors affecting quality, such as production volume, on the supply chain's quality performance. Quality measurement practices in the supply chain of study are described in detail in this dissertation. A high degree of internal integration was observed in the focal company, attributed in great part to the leadership of management, which formulates comprehensive quality planning, specifying quality measurement practices and goals. These practices provide the company with a competitive advantage, and have undoubtedly contributed to its relatively strong market share and financial performance. Significant improvements in defect rate and on-time performance at all levels in the supply chain have been achieved in great part thanks to current initiatives. There is room for improvement, however, regarding external integration; the supply chain of study could benefit from more information sharing with its external suppliers and increasing its supplier development efforts. There is also a lack of true measures of supply chain quality performance that could facilitate tracing variances back to their origin upstream the supply chain. Supply chain metrics must reflect the contribution of each supply chain member to the overall performance, and span the entire supply chain. This is the first study that looks in depth at quality measurement practices from a supply chain perspective. It is also one of very few studies of supply chain management applied to the wood products industry. Examples are presented of how a supply chain performance measurement system can be developed. Results from this research show that it is important to adopt a supply chain perspective when designing a performance measurement system, not least to avoid sub-optimization. Poor quality at any point in the supply chain eventually translates into higher prices for the final customer, is detrimental to customer dissatisfaction, and hurts profitability; with the end result of declining competitiveness of the entire system.
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    A Specialized Data Crawler for Cross-Laminated Timber Information Resources
    Thomas, Ed; Espinoza, Omar A.; Bora, Rahul; Buehlmann, Urs (2020)
    The Internet is composed of more than 6.2 billion Web pages and grows larger every day. As the number of links and specialty subject areas grows, it becomes ever more difficult to find pertinent information. For some subject areas, special-purpose data crawlers continually search the Internet for specific information; examples include real estate, air travel, auto sales, and others. The use of such special-purpose data crawlers (i.e., targeted crawlers and knowledge databases) also allows the collection and analysis of agricultural and forestry data. Such single-purpose crawlers can search for hundreds of key words and use machine learning to determine if what is found is relevant. In this article, we examine the design and data return of such a specialty knowledge database and crawler system developed to find information related to cross-laminated timber (CLT). Our search engine uses intelligent software to locate and update pertinent references related to CLT as well as to categorize information with respect to common application and interest areas. At the time of this publication, the CLT knowledge database has cataloged nearly 3,000 publications regarding various aspects of CLT.