Controlling the forest cloud – Advanced control for increased yield of long-lived forest products

Purpose and goal:

The aim of timber control is to satisfy the demand for different forest products set by the forest industry. The yield of forest products is determined during bucking, i.e., the process of cutting the harvested tree into logs of different lengths and diameters. This project aims to increase the overall yield of sawn timber products.

Increasing the yield of sawn timber is of interest for both forest industries and owner organizations, as well as the climate and society. Sawn timber is in general highly valuable and also classified as a long-lived bio-based (hence carbon binding) product. Expected results and effects:

The goal of the project is to develop new methods for advanced timber control that exploit the characteristics of trees in different harvest areas. The expected result of applying such advanced timber control is an overall increased degree of freedom, in turn allowing to increase the yield of sawn timber. The project has a strong potential to advance in Technology Readiness Level, since key technology components, such as infrastructure for standardized data collection and communication, already are implemented at most large Swedish forest companies and organizations.

Approach and implementation:

The first part of the project covers the development of methods to detect the variation in characteristics of trees in different harvest areas. The expertise and experience of the industry project partners will serve as guidance, in combination with large sets of harvest data. The second part covers the development of methods to adapt the timber control to the forest characteristics.

Both methods for clustering and optimization are expected to play a central role in the project. As a final step, the potential of applying advanced timber control is evaluated through demonstrators.