Lico Optimized Lumber Merchandising Systems

First, which machine this is

Merchandising means two different things in this industry and the gap between them is the whole width of a sawmill. To a sawmill owner a merchandiser is a log yard machine that bucks tree-length stems into log lengths. Lico's merchandising system is a dry-end lumber cut-up and grading line, which is why their own web address for it reads as a grading system rather than a merchandiser. Everything below is about the second one.

Scans every board, cuts the combination that pays most

Each board is scanned on entry, the optimizer prices every viable cut combination against your product values, and the ripsaw executes that solution with up to 5 servo-positioned moving blades producing up to 4 fixed-width pieces per board. Scanning runs from single-point up to full 3D depending on how much geometry and defect data you want feeding the decision.

Around the saw the line integrates steps that usually live in separate cells: a lumber breakdown system, a grading zone, a lug loader, grade-mark reading, moisture detection, trimming and bow busting, ink marking or printing, automatic rip edging removal, top and bottom planing, then sorting and stacking, with a low-RPM grinder handling waste at the source. Output can leave as rough lumber, trimmed one or two ends, planed, ripped one or both edges to random width, or ripped to preset fixed widths, board by board.

The value table is your number, not the machine's

Here is the part that gets skipped in every demo. Lico's published method is that each output product is allowed certain characteristics, grade, color and dimension, and is then assigned a dollar value per board foot, and the control system optimizes for maximum overall dollar value against that. Which means the optimizer is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is only as current as the prices you loaded into it.

A line with a stale value table will cut yesterday's best answer confidently, all shift, and every piece of the machine will be working perfectly while it does. Whoever owns the order file needs to own that table, and it wants reviewing on the same rhythm as your pricing. Set once at commissioning and left alone, it quietly leaks the return away. That is the part of this purchase that is a business process rather than a machine, and it is where the return actually lives.

Why grade is where the money moves

Grading rewards this kind of decision because NHLA grades are yield thresholds, not opinions about appearance. The American Hardwood Export Council puts it plainly in its grading guide: the grade name designates the percentage of clear wood in the board, which is a different thing from how the board looks. A board is FAS when it yields 83-1/3 percent clear cuttings, No. 1 Common at 66-2/3 percent, No. 2A Common from 50 percent up to where No. 1 Common begins.

Those are step changes. A board a fraction under a threshold is worth what the lower grade is worth, and where you cut decides which side of the line it lands on. A grading line is making that call on every board at line speed, against your prices, which is a different job from cutting the most footage out of the piece.

Lico builds the sorting and stacking behind the line, and EBI supplies the scanning layer on plenty of these installations, so we can quote the grading zone, the saw and what happens downstream of it together.