Benefits from market timing controls in sawmill production management

Automated process control equipment in sawmills performs sawing optimization based on a set of product values. Recent studies of the British Columbia sawmilling industry indicate that these value tables are updated infrequently. The rationale for improving profits by more frequent tuning of process control value tables was recently investigated by examining commodity lumber price trends. It was concluded that relative price relationships do not hold for long periods of time. This study used sawing simulation and optimization programs to investigate the potential benefits from five different update frequencies: no updating, semi-annually, quarterly, monthly, and weekly. The study was conducted for a hypothetical softwood dimension mill producing 160 million board feet annually (...)