Wood material features and technical defects that affect yield in a finger joint production process

Abstract

A cost efficient process is the goal of all production, and each manufacturing step affects the material utilization and cost efficiency. There is high diversity in the inherent features of wood, and manufacturing steps must be able to handle this. The overall objective was to study the potential and problems in manufacturing production processes in terms of material utilization efficiency. The production of finger jointed bed sides was chosen as a study case, where the chain of production units are the sawmill, finger joint plant and furniture plant. This article describes the impact of raw material and wood defects that could affect the total yield. A total of 177 logs of three types were tested: butt, intermediate and fresh knot logs. The test material quality was detected and measured through all steps in the manufacturing chain. The results show differences between log types in down-grade causes, reject volume and final yield. Also, the test material showed high levels of defective components with process-related defects, which suggested the need for technical improvement in the manufacturing process. The intermediate log group showed the overall best result.