High-tech trackers aid delivery of logs

By ADAM GIFFORD

Carter Holt Harvey's largest division, Forest Fibre Solutions, is taking technology deep into its forests to make sure it gets the best value from the trees.

A new wood delivery management system (WDMS), developed in a joint venture with trucking firm TD Haulage and Auckland system implementer Econz, is going into Carter Holt's main forests in the central North Island.

And in its northern forests, which include Maramarua and Coromandel, it is using a web-based system developed with Asset Forestry to monitor and manage logs from harvest to delivery.

Chief executive David Denholm said Forest Fibre Solutions had the second-largest transport operation in New Zealand next to Fonterra, with 6000 truck movements a day.

"WDMS improves our ability to get the right logs to the right customer at the correct time," he said.

"Harvesting a forest is a real-time, dynamic business because in every forest you get variation of output.

"It is important to get logs to customers on time on spec because timber is perishable. In summer, logs will go black from sap stain in less than two weeks."

Denholm said the WDMS project was a smaller part of Carter Holt's overhaul of supply chain planning.

"The way the forest company works is we have 150 manufacturing sites, many of them very small.

"Every landing out in the forest is manufacturing a product, every harvest crew is a little factory, so we have to co-ordinate activity across 150 sites to optimise the forest."

Econz chief executive Michael Hartley said the WDMS developers had to deal with complex technical problems.

"We had to overcome the fact that the Vodafone coverage cloud in the area is light. A pine needle is about the same size as the sine wave for cellphone signals, so when the stuff gets wet, there is no way to get cover in the forests," he said.

"To get around that the trucks are given data, and when they go past weighbridges or loading sites the data is automatically updated."

WDMS is a Linux-based system written on an Oracle database.

It includes four communication systems - the Vodafone cellular network, Fleetlink trunk radio, Low Power Radio and internet - feeding data into mobile terminals on loaders, trucks, yards and weighbridges.

Expanding the system further within Carter Holt's forests would mean displacing Asset Forestry's tracking solution, which is also used in some Fletcher Challenge and Rayonier forests.

Asset director John Van Der Leden said his company's online system allowed Forest Fibre Solutions and interested parties such as customers, contractors and suppliers to accurately track the progress of the products in the supply chain in near real-time.

"It is an intelligent communications solution that makes the wood supply chain function at an optimum level - the software moves about 1.5 million tonnes of Forest Fibre Solutions' logs in a way that it is simple, cheap and effective."

Denholm said Forest Fibre Solutions wanted to supply its customers with logs on a "just-in-time" basis, avoiding manufacturing delays, waste and paperwork.