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Sawmill Analysis and Design
- SAWSIM® is widely recognized as the industry-standard tool for sawmill analysis and design.
- HALCO and its clients have used SAWSIM® extensively to evaluate alternative sawmill design and modernization options. It can be used to determine the recovery and mill flow resulting from mill equipment and layout options, and hence determine the optimum equipment and mill layout selections.
- A SAWSIM® study can also provide important data in areas such as:
- Implications of log supply options on mill production rate, mill flow (equipment requirements) and recovery/overrun
- Effects of different product mix scenarios on mill flow and recovery/overrun
- Evaluation of various mill equipment options
- In summary, a SAWSIM® study will help ensure the best possible mill equipment and layout are selected, and that the mill will be able to operate efficiently under the different log supply and production scenarios that it might face.
- Return-on-investment for alternative mill equipment options can be determined, to assist with project funding approvals.
- The first step in a SAWSIM® study is to develop a "Base Case". When there is an existing mill, this is usually for current operations on a typical log diet. This may involve downloading sample log measurements from a mill log scanner or measuring a sample of logs with HALCO's proprietary log measurement technique. The study log sample is then processed in a mill test, and details of the sawing process and resulting productions are recorded. The Base Case model is then calibrated to match the test results. In the course of this exercise, hidden problems in the current process are often uncovered, and fixing these usually more than pays for the study.
- After production of the Base Case, the SAWSIM® model is modified to consider a series of alternatives. Detailed log plots are generated for a sample of logs for each alternative. Comparison of these log plots ensures that credibility of the "total and average" results for each case can be established.
- The WOODSIM™ program may be used to estimate the log diet from cruise data for various harvesting alternatives, for input to SAWSIM®.
- Where the sawmill is operated as a series of production runs, each making a specified mix of products to match an order file, the SAWSIM®-LP program may be used to simulate the sawmill operation.
- The program results are used to choose between alternative designs and to provide data for return-on-investment calculations. For existing mills, the question may be which piece of equipment should be upgraded to yield the greatest return from a limited amount of capital.
- HALCO has helped clients to specify acceptance testing procedures and has assisted with the actual acceptance testing. For primary breakdown optimizer acceptance tests, SAWSIM® is used as the "benchmark" for evaluation of the optimizer's solutions.
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