Research and development of a software system for sawmill operation planning

The paper describes research and development of a software system for sawmill operation planning. Sawmill industry is an important branch of the forestry industry. The aim of the sawing process consists in processing round wood into sawn lumber, as well as technological wood chips. Various tasks related to planning of sawmill operation can be successfully solved with the use of specialized software. Such software allows increasing overall mill productivity, output of high-quality grades of lumber and better matching the production specification. Their use also improves the efficiency of calculating and correcting the operational plans. The paper describes the solution of the problem of calculating monthly volume production plans. Such plans improve the efficiency of calculating the quantity and size-qualitative structure of logs to be sawn and the lumber produced by applying each sawing pattern. The developed software system uses advanced mathematical models and optimization algorithms, implemented in a specialized module. The paper also includes description of the system prototype. The efficiency of the system had been confirmed on real production data of several sawmills in Russia.