Posted on July 11, 2017

Tembec is a manufacturer of forest products – lumber, paper pulp, paper and specialty cellulose pulp – and a global leader in sustainable forest management practices. Tembec has operations in North America and France with some 3,000 employees, including 5 sawmills in Ontario and 2 in Quebec.

Tembec has reviewed and established a long-term capital plan with focus on the modernization of its sawmills. Investments are proposed to be completed in three phases with the objectives to move its sawmills into the 1st and 2nd quartile.

As part of phase 1, three projects were identified for the Hearst Ontario Operation to upgrade its optimization and control systems; a canter-twin optimizer, a curve cant optimizer and a linear planer optimizer.

Tembec Hearst, at 16' random lengths, produces 110 million bf/year on two shifts. The mill has and continues to have a lot of “good” low costs – high payback projects. With the support of Autolog, the mill decided to explore vendor financing with the idea to maximize the cash flow situation. The idea was to structure the payments so that the monthly project benefit exceeds the monthly payment.

Autolog stepped up to the plate and partnered with Tembec. The first project consisted of a curve cant sawing optimizer. It was implemented in a stage fashion in order to reduce the risk to a minimum for both enterprises. They supplied new scanning, optimization & controls on an existing Newnes McGehee 10-inch curve sawing "wiggle box" gang edger.

Tembec’s scanning, optimization and controls were more than 15 years old with no spare parts or service available. The machine lost some functionality when restarted with used spare parts, in addition to the line freezing and experiencing major downtime incidents.

In terms of risk management, this project installation required a stage gate approach since it was Autolog’s serial #1. It was split in 4 stage gates where Tembec would pay only when a stage gate was successfully achieved based on measured performance indicators. The first stage gate was the installation of the new scanner and new optimizer and running it off-line to compare the solutions with the existing scanner and optimizer. Stage gate 2 meant transferring new solutions to the existing controls. The third gate was to install the new controls and finally the fourth and final stage was to complete the final performance test.

For both sawmill projects, the canter-twin and the McGehee curve sawing wiggle box, Autolog supplied their new modular scanner frame which allowed for an easy installation and removal of the old frame, especially in a tight environment. These frames offer the strength of a conventional steel frame with the exception that it is built at the scanner location piece by piece. The scanners were supplied by Hermary Opto from Coquitlam, BC.

The impact on the mill was substantial, they increased uptime on the line, increased the percentage of 16' lumber by 3%, increased the volume recovery by 2.5%, increased the value recovery by 3% and they reduced the gap to further increase production.

A similar approach was taken for the other two projects at the mill: the replacement of the optimization and controls at the canter-twin and the upgrade of their Autolog ProGrader linear planer optimizer.

All the optimization was provided by Autolog resources since they prefer not to rely on third party solutions. Their solution runs on HP computer technology, Windows 10 platform. All the computers for the controls and the setworks are supplied on the Allen-Bradley platform.

Backed with 30 years of experience in the wood industry, Autolog is pleased to offer an alternative to the sawmill industry by offering standard optimization and control systems for many different machine centers. Whether it is a HewSaw, McGehee, Sawquip, Comact, and others, Autolog has the expertise to control almost any production line whether it is a straight or curved sawing technology.