October 1999 Volume 5, Number 10
October 1999 Volume 5, Number 10
By Jack Petree
Contributing Editor
RUTHERFORDTON, NC-Ten years ago, Gilkey Lumber Company took its first step into optimization technology. The hardwood lumber manufacturer put in a new Salem linear carriage band mill. The new mill was paired with optimization controls supplied by Inovec.
"The improvements in production we saw were immediate and dramatic," recalled Mike Parton, co-owner of the business along with his brother, William, and William's son, Tim.
Based on that success, the brothers began planning for additional optimization controls for the sawmill's machinery.
Gilkey Lumber recently embarked on the next phase: optimization controls for its edger. Again, the company partnered with Inovec for controls. Again, Gilkey Lumber has seen the optimization technology make a significantly measurable impact to its bottom line.
Gilkey Lumber dates back to the Great Depression era. The Parton's father, Jess, entered the sawmill business in 1936. He bought a portable sawmill and operated it nearly 20 years. In 1954 he bought Gilkey Lumber, which at the time was a retail pine business. The company put in a mill and began sawing both pine and hardwoods. In the early 1980s, Gilkey Lumber began concentrating exclusively on hardwood lumber manufacturing.
Gilkey Lumber saws about 12 to 13 million board feet of hard lumber annually. Its main product is grade lumber for the furniture industry. Three species make up the bulk of the production; yellow poplar accounts for 31%, red oak, 28%, and white oak, 24%. The remainder is mostly hard and soft maple, ash, and some cherry. The company serves furniture makers in both the U.S. and abroad; it has customers throughout the U.S. and also in the Pacific Rim, Europe, and Mexico. It is a tribute to the company's reputation that it exports to Scandinavian countries, which are renowned for their own production of fine lumber and emphasis on quality.
Gilkey Lumber maintains an inventory of about 12 million board feet of timber in the supply pipeline. The log inventory is kept at about 2.5 million board feet. The inventory of finished lumber includes about 2.4 million board feet of four-quarter to eight-quarter oak in its sheds and another 1 to 1.5 million board feet of kiln dried material.
Their father is deceased, but Mike and William continue to expand and modernize the company's operations. Gilkey Lumber operated for years as a traditional circle mill with a gang edger manned by experienced, expert graders. In the late 1980s, however, the brothers began to consider the changes in technology that were being embraced by the forest products industry, particularly optimization.
"We saw the industry changing and thought it made sense to investigate and change with it where appropriate," Mike said. "The price of timber, especially that of the high quality logs we like to saw, had gone higher and higher, and we weren't getting the yield we knew was possible. It became increasingly obvious to us that we needed to do what was necessary to increase our yield from the fiber we were buying so that we could remain competitive."
Mike and William want to increase both value and yield from raw material that is growing more costly. Gilkey Lumber is making a significant commitment to the future as it implements a five-year plan that will result in state-of-the-art production capacities utilizing optimization technology at every stage of the process, from primary breakdown to the trim saw. Early indications are that the latest investment in optimization controls will result in an even greater payback than what the company achieved when it first began using the technology.
The company's first step into optimization came after considerable research into the technology that was available in the marketplace and the potential payoff. The Salem linear carriage band mill with Inovec controls, installed in 1989, significantly affected the company's performance. "We saw, in that installation, how much improvement could be achieved with the correct combination of sawing equipment and computer controls," said Mike. "We probably had 5 to 6 percent improvement as a result of going to the band from the circle saw and an additional 3 to 4 percent increase in yield as a result of the linear (carriage band mill) and the software."
the story continues...
Inovec Home | Inovec Success Stories | Page 2 of this story | Sidebar: Increases Yield 7-18% | Page 3 of this story
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