Timber is a valuable and renewable material, often used in construction. It is a sustainable construction material helping to capture carbon dioxide and fight climate change. Precondition for this is that timber is being harvested in a legal and responsible way. But for the timber industry to be more efficient and sustainable, it is important to maximize the value of each log in the production process. Timbeter helps companies to achieve that by reducing time, costs, increasing accuracy and helping to track volumes and assortments along the supply chain of the forestry sector.
Recently, countries like India have decided to lift the ban on timber in construction of buildings and habitat projects, as a way to create demand for wood-based products, stimulating the local economy and creating jobs. India is one of the world’s largest importers of timber, having imported over 3 mln cubic meters of tropical logs in 2016. The value of imports in the industry was more than 428 billion Indian rupees at the end of fiscal year 2019. The increase in the overall construction activities in India including large residential complexes, buildings under affordable housing schemes, business parks and recreational zones are also driving demand for new species sorted from inside and outside the country.
Forests form part of the supply chain for the softwood and hardwood timber used in the construction industry. The supply chain for each major construction material (e.g. steel, concrete, brick, timber, cement, sand and aggregate) is quite distinct. However, the global supply chain for wood is a complex network of harvesters, processors, and distributors, with sadly a lot of waste in many of its processes. For example, in USA, one fourth of timber cut is not used (FAO).
Timbeter is helping the private and public sector to take advantage of nature-based products, while maintaining the sustainability of forests. Many of our customers use Timbeter to improve the supply chain of timber around the globe. This helps in digitizing forest management and control, while at the same time bringing efficiency to the local forestry private sector.
Read more about Timbeter’s main functionalities: https://timbeter.com/what-are-timbeters-functionalities-and-when-you-should-use-them
Having precise data throughout the supply chain & keeping inventories up-to-date becomes one of the most important aspects in order to maximize the value of each log. If the process takes too much time, the wood may lose value or simply have to be discarded or used in activities that are not its primary purpose. In Timbeter’s history, unfortunately we have seen too many cases where sawlogs suitable for construction end up in a pulpwood pile of logs suitable for making furniture, and end up as fuelwood.
One of our current Government projects for sourcing timber in a sustainable way, is aimed for different stakeholders in the forestry sector, including local producers of teak, which export mainly to China and India. Timbeter, with its solutions, Timbeter Container and the Cloud computing solution Storage Module, help exporters of timber track their shipments, share information with buyers, local and international authorities, and prevent disputes.
By bringing digital solutions and making measurements easier, accurate, and preventing human error, we aim to make the industry more sustainable and profitable. We can also make sure that the natural resources don’t get wasted.
Learn how to get started with 10 free measurements when registering a new account: https://timbeter.com/how-to-get-started-with-timbeter/
With Timbeter, companies and other stakeholders can achieve:
1) Efficient and paper-free timber management
Timbeter brings efficiency to timber management by providing objective and fast measurements. The solution is totally paper-free – providing all the needed data in digital format, reducing the company’s time spent on reporting. This data also helps the logistic managers to optimize routes, keep track of what is being carried and the road conditions. With digital and objective measurements, the solution makes sure that saw logs end up in a sawmill and not as pulp or fuel wood.
In Indian Timber Industry, various types of wood species are used like Pine, Teak, Oak, etc. Sorting also becomes a necessary task so that there is no mixing between logs of different types, diameters and values in the same pile, which can compromise production, lead to financial losses and reduce the quality of the final product. Timbeter can measure all types of roundwood species and there is a way to leave pre-set assortments to be used correctly by Timbeter users. There are already 12 tree species available in the app and a user can easily insert new species through our Storage Module.
2) Cost Savings: Timbeter solution helps reduce direct or indirect costs. During the Pandemic,, one of the biggest concerns for Timber companies is saving costs.
Many of Timbeter’s customers have confirmed that after implementing Timbeter in their operations, they have brought down costs associated with labour, machinery & paperwork.
E.g., the diameter functionality lets companies sort out unwanted logs easily and helps them reduce huge costs by not paying for the unwanted logs.
Some companies even use paint to mark the logs but with Timbeter, all diameters are available in digital form, so they have had significant savings also from not using paint.
Many more of such examples can be taken from Timbeter’s customers.
3) Reduced time and effort:
In the manual measurement process, the log measurer runs 3 processes simultaneously: measurement, marking, writing. When the pile is being measured, somebody is required to take the paper into office, where he/she (or somebody else in the office) compiles the measurement report. In total time taken to measure 30 cbm manually and do all the required paperwork it’s estimated to take approximately 45 minutes.
Timbeter can reduce this effort & time to a great extent as Timbeter’s Log detection algorithm can detect upto 280,000 logs per hour. The entire process of measuring log diameters, volumes, density & generate reports is extremely easy and quick.
4) Improved Accuracy:
Timbeter detects the contour area of a log under the bark and converts it to a symmetrical circle, from where the average diameter is calculated. For accurate diameter measurement, more than 2000 points per one log counter are detected.
Timbeter ‘s algorithm is highly accurate and has been certified by Metrosert, the Central Office of Metrology (equivalent to a National Metrology Institute) in Estonia. Metrosert certification demonstrated that Timbeter’s error margin was 0.5-1.5%, whereas, error margins for manual measurements, can be anywhere from 5- 10%. Timbeter has also been recently certified for characterization of logs by Bureau Veritas Group, a Chilean Company CESMEC.
5) Traceability & transparency: Timbeter users can manage inventories and have a transparent overview of operations with our Cloud based Storage Module. All the measurements are saved in one place. These measurements can be edited, viewed and shared with others. In the storage module, user can create different wood assortments, create reports and get an Excel file for every measurement. All measurements have geographical location, which helps provide transparency into the process.
In India, when it comes to the unit system for measuring timber, Imperial system is most commonly used. Timbeter can utilize both the metric and imperial measurements systems to calculate timber volumes thus providing the calculated result, whether it be in cubic meters, cubic feet or board feet.
Having the data in a digital form in real-time throughout the supply chain helps all the involved stakeholders to make informed logistics planning and sales decisions, prevents information to be lost or misplaced, and enables companies to feed data to other digital systems such as accounting, ERP, CRM systems already used by companies.
Want to know more about this innovative solution? Contact us at info@timbeter.com.
