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Previous research in forest biomass procurement has been focussing on reducing harvesting costs. However, organisation and management of supply chains as well are considerable cost factors. The present study applies a methodological framework to investigate two forest biomass supply chains in different operational environments of two European countries (Finland and Germany) in order to identify the business processes and stakeholders making up the supply chains using a business process mapping methodology. Additionally, the work time expenditure for organisational and managerial tasks for each of the supply chains is estimated using discrete-event simulations.

The business process mapping revealed that the number of processes in the supply chains varies considerably involving 213 project objects (activities, information items, others) in the Finnish supply chain and 268 in Germany. The work time …