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A new guide to help forest managers and machine owners get the most out of their forest machinery has just been produced by the CRC for Forestry.

As forest operations have become increasingly mechanised over recent decades, they have also become more capital intensive and more complex to manage. International experience in forest harvesting and in related industries has shown significant savings can be made by using on-board computers to get expensive equipment working more effectively. However, on-board computers are considerably underutilised in forest machines in Australia compared with other countries where forestry is a major industry, largely because of a lack of information for machine owners.

The Enhancing Forest Machine Efficiency: On-Board Computer Selection and Implementation Guide gives machine owners access to effective information on what computers are available and which are best suited to different operational needs, under Australian conditions. The guide is based on more than a year of testing the range of available on-board computer types in three major field trials, as well as a number of smaller trials and shared international experience.

A series of six workshops was held across southern Australia during March and April to present the guide to nearly 100 forest industry stakeholders and the results from these trials will be presented to forestry and harvesting managers in early December in both Australia and New Zealand as part of the new ForestTECH 2011 series.

Download the new guide.