Production management for sawmills based on flow of material, energy and production orders

Status

completed

Summary

The European sawmilling industry is faced with structural changes. New competitive sites are built up in Eastern Europe and provide additional timber for the regional and international market. Small and medium sized mills suffer from their limited ability and the high risks to participate in international wood trade. New options for value added activities are considered in order to ensure the operation of sawmilling sites.

Although well established and known processing technologies are used, there is an emerging need for an overall planning approach supporting sawmill operation efficiencies. This new approach centers on discrete event material flow simulation and highly sophisticated planning procedures for the short term production planning. While the simulation model is used to find sys-tem bottlenecks the planning tasks care for an optimized customer order oriented production and efficient resource scheduling at the shop floor. The combined use of workload planning and cut-ting pattern selection is a new method for loading the most appropriate product mix into the shop floor of a sawmill.

In timber production a divergent product structure with a number of valuable by-products must be considered. According to the used sawing technology these products incur in different volumes and quality. Currently, production planning approaches have a strong focus in cutting optimization. All these facts were the basis for the development of a data matrix used in a MIP - model. But it is evident that by applying a rather integrated approach which considers inventory management and a detailed resource scheduling of bottlenecks operation costs can be saved. In addition, a systematic linkage between customer orders and production planning decisions are worked out. This will be beneficially when market trends are changing and a new production mix is required. This new mix not only is a combination of main products but also reflects the demand and margin opportunities of by-products.

The planning approaches are supported by a detailed material flow evaluation, using modern computer simulation techniques.

This work presents an analyzing tool for supporting sawmilling industries with respect to the existing technology and production volume. Applying this new planning instrument will lead to a further increased efficiency of mills. This is a necessary requirement for mills with high personal costs in order to ensure the operation of a particular production site and to remain competitive.

Project management

Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Manfred Gronalt
Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Department für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
Institut für Produktionswirtschaft und Logistik (H 734)

Project collaborator

Dipl. Ing. (FH) Thomas Greigeritsch
Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Department für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
Institut für Produktionswirtschaft und Logistik (H 734)

Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Manfred Gronalt
Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Department für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
Institut für Produktionswirtschaft und Logistik (H 734)
Feistmantelstraße 4, 1180 Wien
E-Mail: manfred.gronalt@boku.ac.at