Pick up STICKS at Toi Ohomai
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TECHNOLOGIES IN FORESTRY today is a piece of software called STICKS.
This harvesting and woodflow cloud-based software system, developed by an Australian forester, uses data that is collected by harvesting equipment to be analysed by a forest manager, the logging contractor and even the machine operator, to get a complete understanding of machines at work.
The harvesting machines (processors, harvesters and forwarders) don’t need to be fitted with any additional software or hardware and STICKS is such a handy tool that every forester and contractor should know how to use it.
That’s why Toi Ohomai has now incorporated STICKS as a core subject in its harvesting and forest management courses.
Already, around 85% of all plantation wood harvested in Australia flows through STICKS on a daily basis and in New Zealand that figure is about 70-75% and steadily growing, according to Ian Wilson, Harvesting Performance Manager with Interpine Innovation, which distributes and markets STICKS on behalf of its owner, ForestPHD (Jeremy Gibson).
Ian is a former graduate of the New Zealand Certificate in Forestry course at the old Wairakei Institute and after spending many years advancing Australia in the use of this technology, he is now helping Wairakei successor, Toi Ohomai, to maximise the use of this technology in teaching the next generation of forest managers and loggers to understand how they can fully utilise the information that harvesting machinery is capable of producing.
James Broadley, Forest Management Tutor at Toi Ohomai says: “We started teaching STICKS in 2016 and it has really worked very well, so now we have included it into our Plan & Monitor Production course in the NZ Diploma of Forest Management programme.”
STICKS uses files (both Classic or SF2010) that conforms to the ’Standard for Forest Machine Data and Communication’ protocol (StanForD) that was developed in Sweden and has been used in virtually all forestry equipment around the world since the late 1980s. All of the leading forest machine manufacturers support the standard and for many years have had computer systems that meets the specifications. But it has only been in recent years, with the requirement of optimisation-enabled controllers on processing heads, that the wealth of data being produced by equipment has begun to be understood and appreciated.
Mr Wilson says: “The data we are able to get from every single log, it’s grade, it’s position within a tree, the location of that tree, the tree size distribution and if the cut was an automatic or manual cut, provides a major opportunity for the global forest industry.
“With the advent of mechanisation, we are now able to run our forests more like a factory and know what’s happening so that we can make proactive decisions rather than reactive ones.
“We can calculate harvested area and perform reconciliation on the fly. And if you know the area and you know the product, you can be updated daily, so you don’t have to wait to the end of the block and ask ‘how did we go’?
“For forest owners, it’s much more valuable for them to say to a contractor ‘spend 15 minutes each day and log on to STICKS and have a look at your sites/machines and see what the Key Performance Indicators are telling you and it’ll tell you exactly what is being produced and if there are any discrepancies’. A lot of contractors are already logging in because they now have access to this information, however, it should be said that there is no productivity type of information in the STICKS Forest Managers version, this can be viewed in the separate STICKS Contractor version that a number of leading contractors within New Zealand and Australia are already utilising (NZ Logger will be following this up at a later stage in a separate article).
“Having that information gives you confidence, instead of guessing, and both the forest owner and contractor can plan ahead for what is coming. That means the contractor becomes part of the woodflow planning process and they can provide much more accurate forecast information while monitoring progress. To do that, we need to be working with accurate and timely information and that’s what STICKS gives us.”
If everyone in the supply chain can understand and use that information, harvesting operations, woodflow logistics, stock management and value recovery becomes more efficient and more productive. That’s why the introduction of the STICKS software solution to the forestry course at Toi Ohomai has been such an important step, says Mr Broadley.
And the students have readily taken to the new technology and are lapping it up, he adds.
“For instance, in the supply chain taught in year two we had a whole lot of data (machinery files) kindly gifted to us by Rayonier from a number of harvesting operations in Canterbury and we got the students to analyse it,” says Mr Broadley.
“I drip-fed them the files, week-by-week, just as if the crews were harvesting and as the files were coming in, then they would analyse it in STICKS. On a Wednesday I said right, tell me how many S15 or pulp or whatever do you think you are going to have by Friday and they were all able to accurately figure out the right answer because the answer was in the data.”
Mr Broadley says the advantages of taking the guesswork out of forestry decisions was brought home to the students when he got them to analyse woodflow logistics.
He says: “In an exercise demonstrating the power of this harvesting data, the students were able to quickly and easily find answers to a lot of very common woodflow logistical questions that they would be asked or expected to be abreast of if working for a forest manager. Questions such as; How much of a particular grade do I have across the forest and for that grade, is the length mix distribution meeting the agreed customer target? How much A Grade has an SED greater than 40cm and could then be sold as A40 grade and return a higher price? Or will the A Grade average SED meet the sales agreement to fill an export order for a vessel arriving next week? How does this weeks’ production compare with last weeks’ production?
“It’s a lot easier to solve a supply chain problem when you actually know what you’ve got and the real key is to be managing production rather than delivery.
“When the information comes in and they can see it in STICKS, they know exactly what is going on and there is no more guesswork.
“Before Ian turned up we weren’t really using the harvester simulators for what they had been built for, we were focusing on the wrong things. All this data was automatically getting generated by the machines, but it was sitting there totally unused. Now we’re using it. So now when a student hops onto a simulator, they are learning more about the whole process, such as how a processor is driven, how to upload and edit an Apt file, how to generate a Pri file and email it to the forest owner rather than just what happens when the file has been received by STICKS.”
That ‘whole process’ will become a special focus this year, adds Mr Broadley.
He says: “As part of the supply chain studies we are going to use the John Deere/Waratah Terrain Editor software where the students can set up their own harvesting blocks with different tree species, stocking rates, harvesting methods and topography – and I’ll give them a list of the grades from the wood buyer that they’ll cut and supply me. Each week they’ll be getting in there, cutting up trees (on a harvester simulator), saving the files and emailing them to STICKS, just as an operator would do and then they’ll analyse the production via STICKS to see if what we are getting is what we require and if not, why not. Do we need to adjust the harvesters Apt file? Or swap our harvester to a new block, just like you would in real life. It should be very interesting.”
The STICKS system will not only be taught to students on the forest management course, it will also be part of the machine learning programme for young loggers as they experience the simulators at Toi Ohomai.
Mr Wilson applauds the initiative by Toi Ohomai, adding: “This course is generating ‘work-ready’ people that are up to-date with the latest technologies for woodflow and value recovery.
“Time is money to the forest owner and the contractor, and delivering people who understand how to use it, then they’ll be making smarter decisions, be more productive sooner and that is definitely a win for everyone.
“You can see that it’s working already because the students are so enthused. They are getting an opportunity not just to work with the data, but to understand the whole process. And it’s the same thing with the operators who are spending more time training on the machines – it’s very important for them to understand their spot in the value chain and what happens to that file after they press the send button.
“Why is the data so important? This is what Scandinavia figured out a long time ago and they just bolted away from everybody else, but the good news is, we are catching up fast.”
NZL