The Veneer Mill Improvement Program

At each step of veneer manufacture, from the forest through the veneer mill, mechanical and human errors reduce the amount of veneer recovered. The Veneer Mill Improvement Program (VIP), developed at the Forest Products Laboratory, is a procedure to measure raw material conversion efficiency in softwood veneer mills and a computer model to predict the effect of processing improvements. Three areas are analyzed in a VIP study: log bucking, block centering in the lathe, and veneer peeling and clipping. VIP is used to identify sources of veneer losses and its results are used to troubleshoot in the mill.