Productivity of a Scandinavian cut-to-length system while second thinning pine plantations

Cut-to-length timber harvesting systems have been used in the Scandinavian countries for many years. Only two machines, a harvester and forwarder, are needed to produce timber products on board a trailer at roadside. There are several reasons why these machines have not been used extensively in the United States: 1) they have a high initial cost; 2) service and parts are not readily available; and 3) operators must be trained on these machines. This paper presents a detailed discussion of the productivity of the Norcar 600H harvester and 490 forwarder while harvesting southern pine plantations. Each time element of the harvester and forwarder operating cycle was modeled. Harvester productivity varied with tree size and ranged from 1.6 to 28.9 cords per productive machine hour (PMH). Forwarder productivity averaged 6.75 cords per PMH. In addition, a set of professional Finnish operators was compared to a set of American operators. The American harvester operator was about 85 percent as productive as the Finnish operator, but the American forwarder operator was more productive than the Finnish operator after 3 months of experience.

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