Old parts become new opportunities
A part of Stenvalls Träs philosophy is to always find new and better ways to do things, to increase the efficiency of our production and to make our customers even happier. Everything from building our small log line at Lövholmen to a smaller project such as the new drying laths receiver at Örarna.
In order to achieve a successful manufacturing process and a profitable business, we always strive to reduce downtime, and increase the flow in our production. Now in the middle of the freezing winter we have an improvement project in the planing line at Örarna. We are putting in a new drying laths receiver for a better handling of drying laths, which today is a source of both stops in production and frustration for our personnel.
In Örarna about 15 kilometers north of Luleå is Stenvalls Träs spruce sawmill and one of our further processing facilities. Here we have among other things a planing line, two roofing board lines and a painting line. At the roofing board lines we manufacture both pine and spruce boards. The boards are then used in house manufacturing, primarily for roofing as a basis for the ceiling. We produce about 1.5 million m2 roofing boards per year. At the planing line at Örarna we mainly produce paneling, structural timber and tongued and grooved boards to our roofing board production line. The products are then either painted or sold directly to our highly quality-minded customers in the building materials trade. The construction wood is used as studs and other components for house-building all over the world, but primarily in Sweden and Norway
The story really begins with our technical manager (who is also one of the three owners), Sven, on his way somewhere in the northern parts of Sweden as he passes a defunct old sawmill. We had long since realized that we need to find a better solution for the management of drying laths in our planing line when we plane lumber directly from kilning. And on this particular day as Sven was passing the defunct old sawmill, there outside the mill a drying laths receiver stood, exactly what we needed! He knew what the sawmill is called, but not who the owner is now. And so the detective work begins, Sven needs to find out who is responsible for the parts that we want. It turns out that those who own the sawmill now is a Japanese company. Luckily, we have a Japanese employee in the Marketing Department, Mika. She is put to work making a deal with the Japanese company. After some discussions we get the green light, the drying laths receiver is ours. Sven travels to the sawmill by himself and gets the parts on his truck. The parts are first taken to Sikfors, where a restoration project begins. There are several mechanics, both in-house and external, helping to rebuild and renovate so that the drying laths receiver is able to fit the production site at Örarna. It has been cut, welded, painted and fixed and now in late January/February 2019 the machine will finally be put in place at its new home at Örarnas planing line. From here on our production manager at Örarna, Jimmy, continues the project to install the drying laths receiver. Working together with skilled mechanics, electricians, and automation experts he will make sure the new equipment will fit seamlessly into our production line. The new drying laths receiver will both reduce our downtime and increase our flow through the planing line. Old parts are reused instead of being thrown away and help us reach a higher efficiency.
On the picture you can see our production manager Jimmy Åkerlund, moving the drying laths reciever at our sawmill in Örarna.
Drying laths
Drying laths are the thin wooden sticks that lie between the layers of sawn lumber when kilning the wood, for the air to access both sides of a wooden board to dry it. They must be removed between each layer of planks/boards before they enter the planing line.