Logistics service requirements in the industry for producing

In general, the sawmill industry perceives softwood lumber to be a commodity product and its individual actors’ traditional focus is on cost reduction. However, instead of focusing on cost reduction, focus ought to be drawn towards sawmills’ total offers in which service is particularly stressed. Therefore, knowledge of the individual logistics service requirements and their internal grouping is of vital importance in order to be able to handle groups rather than individual requirements, thereby keeping costs low. About 20 % of the produced softwood lumber is used for pallets and pallet collars. Producers of pallets and pallet collars thereby constitute important customers to the sawmill industry. Despite this, studies regarding the producers of pallets and pallet collars’ logistics service requirements are lacking. Hence the purpose of this paper is to identify and categorize logistics service requirements in the pallet and pallet collar industry. This paper identifies and categorizes the logistics service requirements demanded by sawmills; by learning which those individual requirements are, then knowing how they could be categorized is essential for the sawmills’ business development. This study commences with an interview study aimed at identifying individual logistics service requirements. Thereafter a survey study is conducted in order to be able to categorize the individual logistics service requirements. The study concludes that logistic service requirements, such as delivery precision and goods wrapped in plastic, are important logistic service requirements; there appears to be a standardized set of logistic service requirements required by this category of customer. As this research is constituted by an interview study as well as by a questionnaire study, it is not possible to identify the actual actions with regards to real trade-offs, made by the actors, which are made in business. Therefore additional studies need to be conducted with an in-depth case study approach.