Trends and Opportunities of Industry 4.0 in Wood Manufacturing Processes

Abstract

Wood industry is key for sustainability and an important economic activity in many countries. In manufacturing plants, wood variability turns operation management more complex. In a competitive scenario, assets availability is critical to achieve higher productivity. In a new fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, data engineering permits efficient decisions making. Phenomena difficult to model with conventional techniques are turned possible with algorithms based on artificial intelligence. Sensors and machine learning techniques allow intelligent analysis of data. However, algorithms are highly sensitive of the problem and his study to decide on which work is critical. For the manufacturing wood processes, Industry 4.0 is a great opportunity. Wood is a material of biological origin and generates variabilities over the manufacturing processes. For example, in the veneer drying, density and anatomical structure impact the product quality. Scanners have been developed to measure variables and outcomes, but decisions are made yet by humans. Today, robust sensors, computing capacity, communications and intelligent algorithms permit to manage wood variability. Real-time actions can be achieved by learning from data. This paper presents trends and opportunities provided by Industry 4.0 components. Sensors, decision support systems and intelligent algorithms use are reviewed. Some applications are presented.