Timber Processing & Energy Expo (TP&EE) announced the speakers for the Lumber Manufacturing Workshop, which will be held on Thursday, October 18, the second day of the event.

TP&EE will be held October 17-19 at the Portland Exposition Center in Portland, Ore. It will feature nearly 200 exhibitors and 60,000 SF of booth displays for attendees from primary producer companies in the lumber, panel and engineered wood products segments.

“We always like to add a small conference element to the expo,” comments Rich Donnell, Show Director and Editor-in-Chief of Hatton-Brown Publishers.

Donnell notes that one of the hottest topics in the sawmill industry is the large number of turnkey southern pine sawmills recently constructed and started up, currently in construction, or about to be in construction.

“Northwest sawmill industry take note,” Donnell says, adding two of the speakers will be from BC-based BID Group, which is the company building and installing most of the equipment in those SYP mills, and which was the main supplier of the massive double-line sawmill started up by Sierra Pacific Industries in Shelton, Wash.

“Will the SYP turnkey trend extend to the Northwest?” Donnell asks.

BID Group Chairman and Managing Director Brian Fehr along with Ron McGehee, R&D New Product Development for BID Group, who is a legend in sawmill machinery development, will speak on “Unlocking the Turnkey Strategy.”

The Lumber Manufacturing Workshop includes eight presentations on a range of topics and technologies. Cost to attend is $75. Click here to register today.

Here’s the schedule for the October 18 lumber workshop:

10:00 a.m.—Increase Your Bottom Line (OR: Don’t Leave Dollars on the Table)—Seth Vance, Vice President and General Manager, Timber Automation

10:30 a.m.—Unlocking the Turnkey Strategy—
Ron McGehee, R&D New Product Development, BID Group; Brian Fehr, Chairman and Managing Director, BID Group

11:00 a.m.—Maintaining a Modern Sawmill: Embrace the 4th Industrial Revolution by Leveraging the IoT and Generate ROI—Laurie McCabe, Sales and Marketing Manager, TradeTec Computer Systems

11:30 a.m.—Advances in Hydraulic Power Unit Design—Richard Vetter, Vice-President, AMS Solutions

Lunch on your own.

1:00 p.m.—Control Your Product Output with the Latest in Artificial Intelligence—Patrick Freeman, Chief Technology Officer, Lucidyne Technologies, Inc.

1:30 p.m.—Bringing Multi-View X-Ray Technology to the Planer Mill—Norvin Laudon, Chief Technology Officer, Springer Microtec

2:00 p.m.— Log Optimization New Development—Mario Godbout, Chief Technology Officer, Autolog

2:30 p.m.—Practical Solutions to Difficult Hydraulic System Design Problems—Peter Nachtwey, President, Delta Computer Systems