Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Holmen Skog is one of the largest forestry companies in Scandinavia and they depend heavily on a large network of forest roads for production and logistics in connection to their forestry operations. The company recently introduced a new system for planning of road management. The system will also be developed with the intention to facilitate the monitoring of actions performed by road contractors. This report will provide information to support future decisions regarding further development of the system, after its introduction. In addition to a presentation of results from interviews, the report also provides a smaller study of the different subjects associated with roads, process work and process development.

The study is largely based on interviews with road contractors that perform work for Holmen Skog today. System suppliers and users, as well as analysts were also consulted. Contractors were interviewed at their workplaces while the remaining interviews were conducted via email and telephone. The interviews were designed based on the qualitative interview method, although some parts have elements of quantitative data collection.

The interviewees were asked, among other things about the parameters they would like to have in a system for monitoring road contractors, how the system should be designed, and what kind of hardware they were most interested in. In addition, questions were asked about for how long data entry should be allowed and how many tasks should be included in a system for monitoring road contractors.

Results from the interviews show that many of the interviewees had similar opinions. In conclusion, a monitoring system should be based on simplicity and must be easy to understand. The system should not include too many parameters and the parameters included should be beneficial for either the contractors or Holmen Skog. Evaluations of the system are important to ensure that it works smoothly and it is important that the purpose of data collection is to make improvements through the whole organization. It is particularly important that the machine operators know the usefulness of the information gathered since they are responsible for much of the information collection.
Regarding the design of the software, type of hardware, the number of parameters to be included in the system and the time allowed for entering data into the system, the answers from the interviewees varied. Respondents argued for their case and the results show many pros and cons associated with different choices. It will be up to Holmen Skog, preferably together with representatives from the contractors, to decide how the proposed system should be designed.