WoodFlow 2018 - Event Summary

The Woodflow series is Australasia’s premier technology event run every two years. It provides insights into innovations and new tools being developed and employed by leading forestry, wood products and transport companies.

We had a record turnout for WoodFlow 2018, with well over 300 attendees from all the major wood harvesting, wood transport, scheduling, planning and logistics companies throughout Australasia.

The objective this year, with 30% – 40% of delivered log costs being contributed by transport, was to profile the very latest technologies for moving wood from the forest through to the log yard, processing plant, port or market. New initiatives and operating practices being employed to improve planning, logistics & operations within the wood supply chain were also showcased.

One of the key themes being explored was the use of scanning and vision technologies around the volumetric measurement of logs.

Laser technologies being employed such as P3D (Chile), Mabema (Sweden), TimSpect Systems (Sweden) and the Logmeter Systems (Chile) as used by forest products companies in North and South America and Europe, have been explored by local companies as part of this latest series.

Forico, a Tasmanian forest management company outlined how they’ve just installed the first Logmeter log scanning system in Oceania, as the company moves from a weighbridge to a volumetric point of sale. Other vision systems developed in Europe for photo-optical log measurement, including Dralle (Denmark), Fovea (Germany) and Timbeter (Estonia), were described with the Timbeter system and able to be demonstrated by the Estonian company at both events.

This year we also included two pre-conference workshops on cloud-based operations management and Transport planning. Both workshops sold out.

The next event is set for 2020. WoodFlow 2020 will build on the continued success of this series and incorporate feedback from the industry, new case studies and the latest technology developments and innovations.

• Disruptive technologies reshaping business operations within the wood supply chain
• Innovations around log scaling, measurement and tracking
• Remote sensing and real-time tracking of logs and wood products
• Innovative systems to integrate planning, operations, harvesting, transport & sales
• Advances in automated log measurement and materials handling
• Telematic tools to better drive improved fleet productivity and safety
• New digital platforms to improve data connectivity and data transfer
• Electric fleet, autonomous trucking and platooning technologies
• Opportunities with robotics, augmented and virtual reality & machine learning
• Utilisation of smart harvester production and productivity data
• Health and safety initiatives around forestry and wood transport operations