Wood products are typically produced in ‘break-down and sorting’ processes: stems are cross-cut and sorted into saw-, pulp- and energy-logs; sawlogs are sawn to boards and sorted according to quality, then split again and applied in various ways. Through the sorting processes, the ‘group traits’ become increasingly more homogeneous, but any individual identity or origin is lost after each process. ‘Group identity’ is even the method for the popular and much applied timber certification systems. ‘Individual identity’ should be an option, however, if the industry wants e.g. to send some specific information together with the wood pieces to subsequent processes, or the answer to questions like ‘what was the outcome of products and profitability of a given lot of raw material?’ Pursuing efforts from the Indisputable Key project, this paper discusses some experiences and commercial opportunities for tracing wood pieces by applying the RFID (radio frequency ID) technique. A rather standardised system has been set up for the forestry chain tracing system: reading/adding and transferring information from various sources like a harvester, a log scanner and sawing machines, and joining this information in databases to be retrieved in subsequent stages. Dissolvable tags that can be accepted in chips for the pulp industry, and other tags tolerable to the harsh conditions in a creosote preservation plant, have been identified. Models are developed that add reliability to the prognoses for quality outcome from stems and logs based on stored information. The option of calculating environmental, wood quality and profitability indicators is incorporated. A case study in tracing preservation treated transmission poles is presented. However, so far the tags appear quite expensive, up to one euro, and there are additional costs to set up and run the system, so the commercial benefit should be indisputable before venturing into a RFID project.
Keywords: Wood industry, tracing cost, information exchange, profitability
Authors
Gjerdrum P.
Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute, Ås, Norway
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