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Abstract
The production of wooden furniture parts, mouldings, and flooring requires the removal of unacceptable character marks (also called "defects") such as holes, rot, knots, etc., from boards. The majority of the wood processing industry manually identifies such unusable areas and marks them with fluorescent crayons. Automated saws scan these marks and computers optimize the available clear areas and activate automated chop saws to make the cuts. If the fluorescent marks delineating the defect are not made accurately (i.e., too far away or inside the characteristic), then either valuable clear wood is regarded as unacceptable and lost during production or parts are produced containing undesirable characteristics leading to rejects. In an earlier study, the error rate of typical rough mill markers was quantified. However, no data is available as to the impact of these errors on yield. For a rough mill manager, this is critical information needed to decide on the money that should be spent to train employees performing marker duties.
Citation
Buehlmann, Urs; Thomas, R. Edward. 2003. Impact of board-marker accuracy on lumber yield. In: Ahmad, Munir; Miller, William; Yalcin, Ali, eds. Proceedings of the 13th international conference on flexible automation & intelligent manufacturing, Volume I. June 9-11, 2003: Tampa, FL. 278-287.
