Decreasing the moisture content variation of flakes in the drying process of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) manufacturing using multivariate time-series pattern discovery

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Decreasing the variation in moisture content of flakes from the drying process is important for cutting the**manufacturing cost of Oriented Strand Board (OSB). A 1% reduction in the standard deviation of the moisture**worths more than $1 million manufacturing cost/year for a typical sized mill. The manufacturing process of**OSB involves cutting logs into flakes, drying the flakes, adding glue and wax, forming the flakes into a**uniform mat and then hot pressing the mat into panels approximately 4 foot by 8 feet. The drying process must**overcome challenges such as the highly variable moisture content of the raw logs, the mixing of flakes from**multiple dryers with different operating characteristics, the time delays of 10 minutes within the dryers and the**time delays of several hours between the dryers and the mat forming station where the moisture sensors are**located, etc. The mill maintains a large database with hundreds of operating variables recorded at high**frequency (every minute or less). Multivariate time-series pattern discovery thus has the potential to navigate**this large database and identify the optimum operating strategy and conditions that minimize the flake moisture**variability.