Case study
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Damage to trees
Transcript
There's always a chance that damage will occur to the retained trees whilst the harvester is removing thinnings and processing the stems. The trick is keeping the damage down as much as we can. -
Monitoring processes
Transcript
The main way I monitor the damage is to watch the machines whilst they're working and then inspect the retained trees for damage after they've finished. And also I examine the audit reports to see what the percentages are for the damaged trees. -
Objectives
Transcript
We thought there was a bit too much damage being caused by the harvester bumping the retained trees and also scuffing them with stems whilst they were being removed. So we set a goal of trying to reduce this type of damage by two percentage points. That is, if we were getting an average of 12% damage, we'd aim to reduce it to 10% next time, assuming that the terrain and conditions were the same, of course. -
Proposed solution
Transcript
Our solution was to leave more 'guard' trees in place whilst the harvester was thinning. The idea is that the guard trees shield the retained trees from bumps and scuffing, and then be taken out before the harvester moves on.