In March 2017, Québec’s Ministère des Forêts, de la Faune et des Parcs (MFFP) and Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation (MEI) launched the SM2 Initiative (also referred to as Smart Manufacturing 2.0) to address structural competitiveness issues for Eastern Canadian sawmills and to promote increased diversification of new products and applications based on smart and agile technologies.
After five years of collaborative research and work, the initiative terminated in the Fall of 2022 with a concluding event where it was possible to learn more about these different projects. An executive summary as well as facts sheets and presentations for several of the projects were also published and are available for consultation.
Conclusive results
The initiative, administered by FPInnovations in collaboration with several partners, addressed the challenges faced in the industry by promoting the development of innovative approaches, the implementation of revolutionary and flexible technologies, and the provision of a wide range of unique end products and by-products to sawmills.
The SM2 initiative included some measurable criteria to try to quantify the overall impacts of the different projects, including:
- 30% improvement of the material yield
- 20% reduction of by-products production
- 10% ($/Mfbm) reduction of production costs.
SM2 also targeted increased revenues from non-traditional co-products and solid products markets.
Although it is difficult to accurately measure the impacts in terms of percentage changes, the cumulative benefits of the SM2 projects are close to the targets for the first two criteria (material yield and by-products), with total reductions ranging from 15% to 27% and from 12% to 25%, respectively. For cost reduction, the cumulative impacts exceed the 10% reduction target, with an overall result of between 11% and 22%.
You want to know more?
Interested in learning more about the initiative and the several research projects? Visit the Smart Manufacturing 2.0 webpage to view the project Executive summary, watch the Concluding event video or get an overview of the individual projects (by opening the tabs).
It is also possible to learn more by contacting the researchers and technicians identified on the fact sheets or by writing to
Source: FPInnovations
