Optimum Clipping Strategies for Hardwood Face Veneer

The hardwood face veneer industry is the primary user of high quality hardwood logs. Since the supply of these logs is declining, methods to increase the utilization of the available supplies of this resource through the reduction of waste can be both resource saving and financially desirable. A major source of waste in the hardwood face veneering process is the clipping operation which, in 1980, was responsible for a loss of 36 percent of the clear veneer sliced. A computer program was developed to determine the optimum clipping pattern for veneer sheets by formulating the clipping problem as a network consisting of nodes representing all possible clipping locations and arcs representing the value obtained from a particular combination of clipping locations. A dynamic programming recursion was used to determine the longest path through the network, thus, the optimum clipping pattern. When tested on 1,718 sample red oak veneer sheets, the model yielded a total waste level of 30.07 percent compared to an observed waste level of 30.36 percent. The clipping model was then used, in conjunction with a break-even analysis, to determine the optimum book size as a function of veneer price and clipping costs. The results of this clipping 32-sheet books was inefficient and significant gains could be made by decreasing the book size to 16 sheets. Such a change would 1 percent reduction in waste which would cause a yield increase worth approximately $1.6 million.

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