Measuring the availability at the sawmill and the capacity
at the planing mill at SCA Timber Rundvik sawmill

Abstract: This master thesis was done at SCA Rundvik sawmill.
Rundvik sawmill belongs to SCA group. It is produced 231,000 m³ and with
the share of developed timber is 61 %.

One of two goals with this master thesis is to measure the availability at
the sawmill more detailed.
It means to start to count a stop as a downtime in the production after 10
seconds instead of 1 minute. And it is to make more stop codes over the
sawline to show the sections where the stops appear often. It was not done
any analyzes of the stops reasons or made any suggestions how to avoid
them. The conclusion does not give any solutions how to increase the
availability.
The measuring time was 127 hours and the availability gotten during the
measuring is 65%.
Stops were started to be registered after 10 seconds since they occurred.
The sorting of the stops were done. Stops from 10 seconds to 1 minute were
sorted like short stops and gave about 2,3 hour per 1 productive week.
The distribution of the stops shows the area of the sawing house where the
problems exist. These areas are the saw in feed, the sawline, the green
sorting, the stick stacker, the chips and sawdust area. The share of the
total stop time is viewed around these areas.
A brief analyze of the stick stacker area has been done.
For the sawline, the use of degree was measured - 76% - and zones
(machines) were pointed out if they are in need of an improvement to
increase the productivity.

The second goal of the work was to check the flow at the planning mill, at
the specific section from the in feed to the planer. The assignment at the
planer mill is to look at one special product that gives the lack of boards
to the planer. According to the data from SCA, the planer needs 200/3,7
≈ 54 piece/minute in average. The mean value (pieces/minute) that goes
really through the planer is 23 pieces/minute. Capacity losses and areas
with problems in this section were estimated.