4 minutes with… Mahmood Ebadian, Founder, Biomass Supply Chain Consulting

Tell us about your company and it’s role in the Advanced Bioeconomy.

Biomass Supply Chain Consulting Ltd. specializes in the application of decision science to help its clients make more informed strategic, tactical and operational decisions across the biomass supply chain. Expertise includes simulation and optimization modeling, sensitivity analysis, scenario-based analysis, and feasibility studies. The role of the company in the advanced bioeconomy is to help biomass producers and consumers to better understand the dynamics and complexity of the biomass supply chain. Systematic thinking is the key in our analyses to assure that the recommended decisions have a net positive impact on the performance of the entire supply chain, not only on a specific entity in the supply chain.

Tell us about your role and what you are focused on in the next 12 months.

My role is to design, plan and schedule biomass supply chains for commercial-scale biofuel/bioenergy plants. I will be working on three projects in the next 12 months: one is the viability study of the production of biojet from woody biomass in Western Canada and the two other projects involve the development of a depot-based logistics network for a power plant and a pellet plant in Eastern and Western Canada, respectively.

What do you feel are the most important milestones the industry must achieve in the next 5 years?  

I think one of these milestones is the development of reliable and robust technologies that can use a blend of feedstock instead of being in love with only one source of biomass. Another milestone is to develop biomass supply chains that can manage the quality of biomass prior to delivery to the conversion facility. Current biomass supply chains are not effective to do so. One solution would be to develop depots where biomass is transformed into a drop-in feedstock that can be fed into the throat of the reactor with no/minimal pre-processing. This depot can help biorefineries to reach the steady-state in a reasonable time. Currently, the low and inconsistent quality of biomass has created significant challenges for the existing commercial-scale biofuel plants to increase the efficiency of their conversion process. However, the depot should provide enough value in the entire biofuel supply chain to become a sustainable independent entity in the bioeconomy.

If you could snap your fingers and change one thing about the Advanced Bioeconomy, what would you change? 

Being realistic about the growth of the bioeconomy and stop over-promising and under-delivering.

Of all the reasons that influenced you to join the Advanced Bioeconomy industry, what single reason stands out for you as still being compelling and important to you?  

I was amazed by the idea of converting waste into value-added products. This conversion requires a robust and reliable biomass supply chain in terms of quality, quantity and cost. The dynamics and complexity of the biomass supply chain has made this supply chain an interesting and of course challenging area to work on.

Where are you from?

I was born in Iran and moved to Canada in 2008.

What was your undergraduate major in college, and where did you attend? Why did you choose that school and that pathway?

I earned my B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering at the University of Tehran because this major provided me with the opportunity to learn about how to observe, understand and manage a business as a system and armed me with the tools to improve it.

Who do you consider your mentors – could be personal, business, or just people you have read about and admire. What have you learned from them?

My mentor is Toyota Company. I spent almost three years to understand their production philosophy, known as Toyota Production System (TPS). The main lesson I learned from this company was how important it is to develop and implement tools and ideas that are simple (easy to understand and transfer) and efficient (easy to measure their positive impact on the performance of the entire system).

What’s the biggest lesson you ever learned during a period of adversity?  

Stay focused, embrace mistakes, learn from them and move on. In addition, avoid toxic people.

What hobbies do you pursue, away from your work in the industry?

Soccer, Tennis, Dragon boating, and Salsa dancing.

What are 3 books you’d want to have with you, if you were stranded on a desert island?

The Toyota Way, Competitive Strategy and On Competition.

What books or articles are on your reading list right now, or you just completed and really enjoyed?  

My favorite source of reading is Harvard Business Review- lots of fresh, scientific and diverse articles about different aspects of personal and professional life.

What’s your favorite city or place to visit, for a holiday?

The south of Italy.