KWS Saves Georgia Pacific Lumber Mill $60,000 in Potential Downtime

Challenge

Dimensional lumber such as 2 by 4s are produced from southern yellow pine. Pine trees are grown on tree farms to approximately 10-inches in diameter before being harvested. The harvested trees are brought to a sawmill for processing. The trees are debarked, cut to length and squared off to form “slabs”. From here, the slabs are cut into 2 by 4s or larger dimensional lumber. The dimensional lumber is then dried in a kiln at 350-degrees for 18 hours and then planed to exact dimensions.

Screw conveyors are used throughout sawmills for conveying bark, sawdust and shavings. Georgia Pacific is one of the world’s largest lumber providers and needed a uniquely designed replacement trough section for a screw conveyor that was leaking sawdust from the process.

KWS Advantage

KWS and a local power transmission distributor went to the plant to determine critical measurements, relaying the information back to the KWS manufacturing facility, so no time was lost. A drawing was made of the special trough section so the information would be captured for future use. Within 3 days, the customer had their much-needed trough section and installation went perfectly.

Cost Savings Calculation – Downtime Avoidance
$10,000.00 per hour X 6 hours = $60,000.00