Editorial: Special Issue on the Forestry Products Industry

This issue is the first under this editorship that focuses on a specific industry. The forest products industry has a long history of MS/OR applications. The traditional applications have focused on using linear programming in areas like production scheduling and timber stand management. This issue reviews recent trends toward the use of larger scale integrated models on the one hand and the application of personal computing and distributed data processing on the other. Terry Harrison and Cornelis de Kluyver, the editors of this special issue, begin by presenting a perspective and overview of the contributions.