Domtar invests in sawmill to maintain competitiveness. (Forestry).Domtar's McChesney sawmill sawmill, installation or facility in which cut logs are sawed into standard-sized boards and timbers. The saws used in such an installation are generally of three types: the circular saw, which consists of a disk with teeth around its edge; the band saw, which operation in Timmins expects to maintain its cutting edge by bringing its fully computerized computerized adapted for analysis, storage and retrieval on a computer. computerized axial tomography see computed tomography. edger optimizer equipment on line this April. In a move to improve efficiency, enhance worker safety, reduce waste wood and preserve jobs at the Timmins mill, the company invested $4 million in this new technology and in a 10,000-square-foot expansion. Construction on a new building to house the edger began prior to Christmas. The mill will shut down for three weeks in March to install the edger before operations resume April 2. Widely used by forest product companies in western Canada
Western Canada, commonly referred to as the West , the edger optimizer technology is now making inroads inroads Noun, pl make inroads into to start affecting or reducing: my gambling has made great inroads into my savings inroads npl to make inroads into [+ into Ontario, says mill manager Benoit Melancon. The optimizer edger removes defects along the length of the board, assessing the wane more precisely with computerized scanners before adjusting the cutting blades, says Melancon. It will replace two manual edgers. "When an operator looks at a two by 10 with a lot of wane, he may downgrade Downgrade A negative change in the rating of a security. Notes: For example, an analyst may downgrade a stock from strong buy to buy, or a bond rating agency may downgrade a bond from AAA to AA. that to a two by six, when in fact with an edger optimizer the board is being aligned and placed in such a fashion that it could be cut to a two by eight. "(The edger) develops more efficiencies into our process to maximize the amount of board we can pull out from a round surface," says Melancon. who expects it will increase mill production by about five per cent. The edger optimizer is also less labour intensive, requiring a single operator on the machine as opposed to the two workers on each of their manual edgers. The risk of employee injury is also reduced because this new technology requires less hands-on work, he adds. "With our edgers now, the boards now are being flipped manually, they are being optimized manually and being fed into the machine manually," says Melancon. Employees feed in about 3,000 boards per shift. "They are always at risk of being cut by the board when its being pulled into the edger. No new jobs will be created as a result of the expansion. If anything, Melancon says the upgrades will preserve the jobs they have among their 110 unionized employees, plus 25 management positions. "What we have to do is develop our employees to operate this new technology which we have all employees already capable of for those new computerized systems." With the changing nature of the softwood softwood Timber obtained from coniferous trees (mainly of the pine and fir families). With the exception of bald cypress, tamarack, and larch, softwood trees are evergreens. lumber lumber, term for timber that has been cut into boards for use as a building material. The major steps in producing lumber involve logging (the felling and preparation of timber for shipment to sawmills), sawing the logs into boards, grading the boards according to industry due to American-imposed countervailing duties Countervailing duties are a means to restrict international trade in cases where imports are subsidized by a foreign country and hurt domestic producers. According to WTO rules, a country can launch its own investigation and decide to charge extra duties, provided such additional on Canadian exported wood, maximizing efficiencies and improving lumber grades through investments in new technology is vital in keeping a competitive edge, says Melancon. "That's the reason why we keep on investing in the mill and the operation," says melancon, "Even if there are lumber disputes, we need to maintain and improve our efficiencies to stay competitive." |
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