Automatic tracking of wood

Sammanfattning: Proper industrial utilisation of wood is difficult, becausewood is a biological material and wood properties vary greatly.Also the knowledge of wood parameters is insufficient. A reasonfor this is the difficulty getting sufficient amounts of datafor statistically overcoming the variability of the material–a tedious and almost impossible task. Another difficultyis characterising how different wood properties correspond tovalues in the wood product.Lack of knowledge transferred from one process to the othermeans that valuable forest raw material and human skills arewasted on low value wood products. This affects many areas, ofwhich production, trade of logs and lumber and wood products,and forest management are the most important ones.The method proposed tracking of wood means that each wooditem (log, board, package) can be made an individual byattaching a specific id-code, to which data can be tied duringthe operations of transformation in the forestry-wood-chain,from tree to wood product. The method also comprises utilisingthe data generated to achieve a better understanding ofmaterial and production related topics. Finally the method canbe integrated in an automatic production control system.The thesis concentrates on specific problems concerning thetracking operation and utilisation of the wood tracking. Itcontributes to the almost non-existing knowledge in this fieldby presenting and discussing the basic problem that useful datais not at all collected. Then the four main elements intracking of wood: data generators, coding systems, networks andutility software are presented. Finally it contributes bystructuring some factors which influence the tracking ofwood.Two practical implementations are presented. They are basedon a tracking of wood database linking the bucking operation inthe forest to the log sorting station at the sawmill, andlinking further to the saw line. One study deals withmeasurement accuracy at different sensors and how this canimprove SPC, statistic process control. The other study shedssome light on the problems associated with securing the originof two lots of timber from forest to sawmill. Both studiesstrongly illustrate the need for tracking of wood.Keywords:Database, forest, lumber, productidentification, traceability, tracing, tracking, wood, woodproducts.