Hardwood is currently underestimated with respect to its utilisation and its value creation potential. Due to changes in forest management in various countries, hardwood resources will become more important. However, solid hardwood (SH) production capacities, mainly structured as small to medium-sized enterprises (SME), are dropping or have dropped already because of changes in the wood products market. Enhancing the SH sector, the foundation of products, processes, and technology must be better understood. To support the SME SH business, the approach used here focuses on manufacturing processes of the first and secondary downstream industry. A multi-step Quality Function Deployment has been developed to match the manufacturing process with the product architecture, and a Process-Technology Matrix has been added to visualize the influence of technology on the manufacturing process. Both have been applied on three chosen hardwood products which are solid wood panel, parquet, and glued-laminated timber. The main contribution of the paper is a conceptual consideration with a conceptual framework rather than providing comprehensive solutions. Optimization potential exists within the SH manufacturing chain based on alternative the combinations of manufacturing processes and applied technologies.

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Due to changes in forest management in various European countries, hardwood forest areas and amounts will increase. Sustainable and individual utilization concepts have to be developed for the upcoming available resource. Studies conclude that there is low potential for hardwoods in the traditional appearance market thus the application areas have to be extended to new structural innovative products. This paper examines the extension to a future laminated beech wood supply network which would be a combination of already existing and new production facilities. For a better future use of hardwood raw materials it is necessary to consider the entire supply chain. This also better shows a total hardwood value chain. Therefore, this paper provides data to the solid hardwood business and develops a mixed integer linear programming to design a laminated beech wood supply network. The model is applied to Austria as the sample region. It covers the important strategic decisions where to locate a downstream facility within the existing production network with the lowest supply network cost. Fourteen scenarios are developed to examine various future network configurations. Results about optimal material flows and used sawmills as well as downstream production facilities are presented in form of material and financial performances. Two optimal laminated beech production locations are determined by the calculated scenarios results, and the impact of a new sawmill is analyzed which is focused on beech.