Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 1973. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-115).

British Columbia's plywood industry between 1913 and 1935 bore little relationship to the industry of the post-World War II period. In 1913, the Canadian Western Lumber Company's Fraser Mills plant manufactured Douglas fir plywood, but until the late 1930s the largest part of its production was used in door manufacture. Two cottonwood plywood manufacturers, Laminated Materials Company (1913–1931) at New Westminster and the British Columbia Veneer Works (1928–1945) at Nelson, sold their plywood for interior wall paneling and specialty uses such as packing crates. The opening of the H. R. MacMillan Export Company's (MacMillan Bloedel) Vancouver plywood plant in 1935 and its Alberni plant, built in 1942, began a new era of plywood production. Sanded Douglas fir plywood dominated sales. The major producers (MacMillan Bloedel, Canadian Forest Products, Crown Zellerbach, British Columbia Forest Products, and Weldwood), assisted by the Plywood Manufacturers Association of British Columbia, targeted customers and created demand for waterproof Douglas fir plywood. The major producers established a network of wholesale warehouses across Canada and used these warehouses as a competitive strategy to develop and influence sales. The major manufacturers after World War II used the high profits generated by Douglas fir plywood to assist their expansion into integrated forest products. Each company chose a different strategy of expansion and adapted its plywood production to suit its corporate goals. Plywood became one product among several and declined in importance for each company. By the 1970s substitute products such as oriented strand board were being promoted as replacements for plywood. Cheaper production costs and the use of waste wood fibre, instead of high quality Douglas fir logs, meant that government and industry favourably viewed the substitute products. The high value of old growth Douglas fir logs and increased costs in all aspects of production resulted in the closure of all but one coastal plywood plant, Richmond Plywood, by 1999. Exports were a small percentage of total plywood sales and did not compensate for declining domestic demand. The interior plywood industry was re-established in 1951 with the opening of Western Plywood's Quesnel plant. A number of plants, scattered throughout the interior, produced plywood using small logs and species other than coastal Douglas fir. Production was mainly sheathing used to clad building floors, roofs, and walls. The scattered nature of plant location, cheaper log costs, small log processing technology, and different harvesting tenures contributed to the success of interior plywood production. The large producers closed their coastal plywood plants arguing that production costs were too high and that other products were replacing plywood in the marketplace. The prosperity of interior plywood manufacturing suggests that the coastal industry stopped production because neither government nor manufacturers saw any reason to seek viable alternatives. The forest industry's diverse nature and its perception of future, based on past activities, supported the closure of the coastal plants and the continued survival of the interior plants within a new forest economy. / Graduate

This thesis presents a general review of sales forecasting literature with particular attention to the preparation of the sales forecast, the pre-planning activities and the review. In addition, forecasts are developed which show the expected sales of domestic softwood plywood to be realized by the plywood industry for the years 1964 and 1968. A procedure is then presented that Crown Zellerbach Company can follow in using the industry forecast to ascertain their share of the expected softwood plywood sales. Sales forecasting is an essential prerequisite to company planning. Therefore, forecasts must be as accurate as possible because many activities within the firm are based on the sales forecasts. With the assistance of sales forecasts, vital marketing, financial and production plans ultimately emerge, together with their supporting schedules. The person responsible for the forecasting task must acquire not only a detailed understanding of company activities but also a thorough knowledge of the characteristics of a sound forecasting operation. The forecaster must be familiar with the various judgment, survey and statistical techniques available for developing forecasts and he must understand the necessity of carrying out numerous pre-performance and post-performance activities. The pre-performance activities must be dutifully carried out if the most useful forecasting method is to be chosen. Post-performance activities are equally important. A time-table for review and revision when necessary must be drawn up ahead of time if proper control is to be exercised over the forecast. A simple regression equation and three multiple regression equations are developed with the intention of using one or more of them to forecast industry softwood plywood sales for the years 1964 and 1968. The three multiple linear regression equations are rejected because each of them possesses one or more unacceptable negative constants. The simple linear regression equation has an extremely high coefficient of correlation and a small standard error of estimate. Since this equation contains these desirable features and seems to incorporate no underlying fallacy, this simple regression equation is the one chosen to forecast industry plywood sales. The share-of-market approach is used to determine the proportion of the industry sales to be captured by Crown Zellerbach Company. The total projected industry sales figures are multiplied by a percentage which represents the company's present share of the total market. The figures that result represent the anticipated plywood sales to be achieved by Crown Zellerbach Company for the years 1964 and 1968. Crown Zellerbach should not depend solely on the technique developed in this thesis for forecasting plywood sales. They should continue to use the subjective or judgment technique that they have used for a number of years, but they would follow a better course if they used one or more statistical or survey methods in addition to the present method. A final forecast could be selected after an analysis had been made of the forecasted figures developed by the various methods. / Business, Sauder School of / Marketing, Division of / Graduate

Mémoire (M.P.M.O.)-- Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1990. / Ce mémoire a été réalisé à l'Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue dans le cadre du programme de maîtrise en Gestion des PMO extensionné de l'UQAC à l'UQAT. CaQCU Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

Widely differing theoretical expectations exist concerning the economic performance of labor-managed firms or producer cooperatives (PCs). While a good number of theoretical studies of these firms by economists have been undertaken, there remain considerable gaps in the empirical record. This is especially true in the case of American PCs. In general, theoretical controversies have not been tempered by enough empirical analysis. While some expect good performance from PCs, others are much less sanguine. This study compares the economic performance of a group of eight worker-owned producer co-op plants with that of eight conventional mills in the Pacific Northwest softwood plywood industry. The purpose is to test the validity of several propositions that are typically maintained in the analysis of PCs suggesting that this type of organization basically lacks the incentive to utilize labor inputs efficiently, and is therefore less productive when compared to conventionally organized producing units. Using secondary data, pooled time-series cross-section equations are estimated. Results indicate that growth in annual output per employee per year is 18 percent greater in the co-ops than in their conventional counterparts. The study provides strong evidence that the two groups of plants differ significantly in their behavior. The major conclusion that emerges is that worker-owned co-ops are a viable and productive form of economic organization that utilize labor inputs efficiently and in doing so can achieve higher worker productivity than their conventional counterparts. In a public policy context, government support of employee ownership and establishment of worker-owned co-ops is viewed as a viable policy option to plant closings.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Forestry, 1981. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 202-212).

Over the years a significant decline in employment had occurred in the Douglas-fir region’s lumber and wood products industry. High levels of unemployment can lead to undesirable economic and social effects. An understanding of the nature of unemployment can facilitate future planning as well as mitigating current problems. This study has attempted to examine the underlying causes of employment decline in the region’s softwood lumber and plywood industries, specifically over the period 1979-86. This time span is of particular importance since there was a rapid decline in employment levels after 1979. There has been much controversy over the causes of this reduction but no comprehensive empirical analysis was ever undertaken to determine its cause. Meanwhile levels of output, which also declined in the early part of this span, have again reached pre-recession levels. A cost function approach was employed as the basis of the empirical analysis. The results suggest that most of the employment decline in these industries has been caused by changes in the structure of production and by increasing labour productivity. Although there are indications of cyclical unemployment, much of the reduction in the industries' labour force seems to be attributable to greater substitution of capital and logs for labour. Simulation analyses tend to suggest that changes in factor prices would not have had any dramatic effect on employment levels. It was found that of the recent employment decline in the two industries, around one-quarter of the loss in the lumber industry and one-third in the plywood industry are caused by cyclical forces. Structural factors were assumed to be the cause of the remaining loss in levels of labour input.