Operations management in the forestry industry: Grupo Forestal Río Claro

Gino Brunetto and the redesign of sustainable efficiency at Grupo Forestal Río Claro Chile

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🔍 Article co-created with Gino Brunetto, General Manager at Grupo Forestal Río Claro Chile, and Augusto Unzaga, host of Keru Podcast.

🎙️ This article was inspired by Episode 18 of Keru Podcast.

Keru Podcast, created by Globalita.io, is a series of conversations (in Spanish) with industrial leaders from Latin America about management, technology and decision-making in complex environments.

01A slow-growing industry with critical decisions

Forestry operations management presents a structural paradox: it works with long maturation cycles —plantations that take up to 15 years to reach commercial value— yet it demands agile short-term responses. In this context, running a forestry company means simultaneously sustaining current efficiency and future viability. There is no room for improvisation.

Gino Brunetto Chile, from his role at Grupo Forestal Río Claro Chile, puts it clearly: the central challenge is making daily operational decisions that don’t compromise the strategic horizon. The forest doesn’t allow cumulative errors; a bad decision today is paid for in the next decade.

“In the forestry industry, you can’t afford to operate without understanding the long-term impact of every move.”

This balance between vision and action defines the forestry operations management model Gino has been developing. It’s about integrating sustainability, operational discipline and organizational culture into a single system.

02The weight of invisible decisions

One of the first points Gino Brunetto Grupo Forestal Río Claro identified was that the most costly inefficiencies weren’t always the most visible. It wasn’t about major technical failures or catastrophic events, but about small, poorly synchronized decisions: poorly planned transport, misused man-hours, underused machinery.

To tackle this reality, an approach inspired by Value Stream Mapping from Lean thinking was applied: mapping all critical flows —logistics, field operations, planning— and detecting where the “waste” of time, money or energy was accumulating.

This systemic view is key so that forestry operations management doesn’t depend on individual decisions, but on a collective logic that stays consistent over time.

03Sustainability as part of the process, not as a narrative

Talking about industrial operational sustainability in the forestry sector is not a concession to marketing: it is a strategic necessity. The company operates in a regulated environment, with nearby communities, and on a base of finite natural resources. There is no possibility of expansion without conscious management.

Gino approaches it from an integrating perspective: sustainability isn’t just conserving the forest, but making sure production processes are designed to regenerate value. This means maintaining soil health, optimizing water use, reducing emissions and minimizing unnecessary interventions.

“The most sustainable thing isn’t to stop operating. It’s to operate better, with minimum impact and maximum technical judgment.”

To turn this vision into concrete operations, Grupo Forestal Río Claro Chile adopted precision forestry practices, supported by sensors, predictive models and intensive use of data.

04Professionalizing without losing the connection to the field

One of the great achievements in forestry operations management at Grupo Forestal Río Claro Chile was professionalizing processes without breaking the connection with practical field knowledge. For Gino Brunetto Grupo Forestal Río Claro, operational knowledge isn’t only in manuals, but in the experience accumulated by field teams.

“You can have all the data, but if you don’t talk to the people who walk the forest, you’ll still get it wrong.”

05Leading from operations without losing strategic vision

A particular challenge of forestry industries is that the impact of decisions isn’t seen immediately. Operational management means taking actions today that will only show up years from now, while solving everyday problems such as road maintenance, shift coordination or machinery availability.

For Gino Brunetto Chile, the manager’s role isn’t to choose between operations and strategy, but to know how to inhabit both dimensions at the same time. That means being present in the field, understanding the technical variables that affect immediate performance, and at the same time sustaining a clear conversation about long-term objectives with the executive team.

“If you’re only in the office, you don’t see what’s happening. And if you’re only in the field, you don’t know where you’re going.”

This operational leadership model is aligned with practices such as the Gemba Walk, a Japanese method from the Toyota system which suggests that leaders should go out to the field to observe processes directly, ask questions and generate learning in dialogue with workers.

06Professionalizing without bureaucratizing

One of the risks of implementing more technical and systematic processes is falling into the trap of bureaucratization. Unnecessary forms, controls that add no value, decisions delayed by excessive approvals. To avoid this, Grupo Forestal Río Claro Chile adopted a logic of agile professionalization: clear processes, trained people, fast decisions.

Gino Brunetto Grupo Forestal Río Claro prioritized developing middle managers with technical judgment and real autonomy. Field supervisors were strengthened, given training in planning and resource management, and brought into the strategic discussion. This made it possible to reduce reaction times, improve the quality of interventions and generate greater commitment in execution.

This vision is strongly inspired by the principles of Lean Leadership, which promotes a flat structure, with distributed decisions, and an organizational culture based on solving problems at the root.

07Measuring what matters, not just what’s easy

In many organizations, operational indicators end up serving only to fill out reports. But in a forestry company, where errors can have irreversible cumulative consequences, indicators must be true management tools.

That’s why one of Gino Brunetto Chile’s most relevant contributions was building a system of relevant indicators for each operational level: from yield per hectare to machinery efficiency, including environmental variables such as compaction, erosion and area recovery.

“Measuring is only the first step. What matters is how you use that information to decide differently.”

To make it operational, the Policy Deployment (Hoshin Kanri) approach was applied, which translates strategic objectives into measurable goals at the tactical and operational levels. This made it possible for every decision —from allocating man-hours to planning roads— to be aligned with a common purpose.

08Sustaining sustainability beyond the discourse

One of the main tensions forestry companies face is sustaining their environmental commitment without it becoming a financial burden. In many cases, sustainability plans fail because they are treated as appendices to the business, not as an integral part of operations.

For Gino Brunetto Grupo Forestal Río Claro, the secret lies in building industrial operational sustainability that is economically viable and technically rational. That means designing processes that reduce impact without raising costs excessively, training staff in low-impact practices, and making decisions that balance efficiency with regeneration.

This kind of logic is closely related to the Green Lean approach, which proposes integrating sustainability goals with principles of production efficiency.

09Operational culture as a competitive advantage

Beyond technologies, systems and planning models, what distinguishes Grupo Forestal Río Claro Chile —according to Gino— is its operational culture. A culture that values disciplined execution, clear communication, respect for field knowledge and constant improvement.

This culture is neither imposed nor decreed. It is built every day through concrete practices: feedback in the field, fast problem solving, openness to suggestions, and recognition of those who sustain the system.

“Culture is what happens when the boss isn’t around. That’s why it has to be well designed.”

To sustain that culture over time, formal continuous improvement spaces were set up (based on PDCA cycles), role rotation is promoted as a development strategy, and good practices are documented to ensure they are passed on.

This approach reflects the operational excellence model of the Toyota Production System, where the standard is not a limit but a starting point for constant evolution.

Gino Brunetto Chile’s experience in forestry operations management shows that it is possible to combine environmental sustainability, operational efficiency and a strong organizational culture in a single strategy. It’s not about choosing between producing or caring, between growing or preserving, but about designing systems that can do both with intelligence and commitment.

In a sector of long cycles and sensitive decisions, industrial operational sustainability is not an ethical or reputational option: it is the only realistic way to ensure that the company, the forest and the community can continue to exist over time.

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Keru Podcast, created by Globalita.io, is a series of conversations (in Spanish) with industrial leaders from Latin America about management, technology and decision-making in complex environments.