LAUSR

Supply-chain management of the forest industry focuses on improving client services which requires efficient collaboration between organizations in practice. Therefore, collaboration of third party logistics (3PL) and fourth party logistics (4PL) companies were analyzed using a survey and the inductive organizational gap-analysis. The supply-chain companies of the 3PLs asked for better quality information from client factories for improving logistics. They also needed online information for improving the quality control of logistics provided by their subcompanies. In addition to the quality, all companies (3PL, 4PL, clients) will need new information technology for synchronizing supply-chain operations efficiently. In this respect, the findings show how 3PLs want to adopt 4PL’s coordination mechanism for creating advanced collaboration on triadic relationships of the companies. This knowledge can be used by industry in engineering the 3PL and 4PL towards franchise-provided multiclient supply chains; cloud-service applications of collaboration groups for synchronizing wood-harvesting and transportation operations are especially important in the future. Implications of this background theory for practice are discussed mainly from perspective of decentralized wood procurement. Study Implications: Findings from the study can improve supply chain efficiency both in forest industry and logistics companies. In practice, new information and communication technologies (ICT) were suggested for synchronizing supply-chain operations. 3PLs also need on-line information for improving the quality control of logistics. The practical changes should focus on coordination mechanisms which provide development towards franchise-provided multi-client supply chains. Supply chain participants would benefit from these investments and therefore should pay for changes. Forest industry as a 4PL should make more investments on cloud-service applications because this part of ICT is a more permanent element of the coordination system than logistics companies’ systems.