Company
Advanced technologies for sawmills
We are a technology company with scanning systems and software as spearheads. We make sawmills succeed using advanced technology.
MiCROTEC Espoo was born on May 1, 2021 when FinScan merged even more closely with its parent company MiCROTEC and adopted the MiCROTEC brand name. Both MiCROTEC and FinScan have decades of experience in the development of scanning equipment for the sawmill industry. Together, we will be able to offer sawmills even better solutions and a wider product range, thus improving the profitability of sawmills.
FinScan comes from the land of a thousand lakes and one of the most densely forested countries on the planet – Finland. The company was founded by three engineers with one idea: to create useful solutions for the sawmill industry and have fun doing so. Although have long since outgrown this phase, the same “let’s make this work” attitude remains. We’ve always worked closely with our customers to find the best solutions to their challenges.
Our R&D department has decades of experience, as we started out in 1989 and have been progressing ever since.
Our mission is to make sawmills perform better. We do this by providing our customers with means of knowing more about timber materials, managing data and optimising grading and production. Our leading technologies and service model give our customers a competitive advantage in the sawmill industry.
Buzzard – AI that revolutionises board scanning
Buzzard® is a Deep Learning solution for real-time defect detection. This innovative board-scanning solution was named after a common species of hawk whose vision is eight times sharper than that of humans. Buzzard® is a research and engineering success which was created by our own product development team in order to serve our customers even more effectively.
With recent advances in Machine Learning and Deep Learning, 2017 saw us come up with the idea of enhancing our board-scanning system with the power of autonomous artificial agents. This idea then grew into a project known as Buzzard® and resulted in ground-breaking product development in sawn-timber grading.
Detecting rotten areas on timber surfaces is known to be extremely challenging due to the variations in colour, shape and textural appearance. In order to separate rotten areas from reaction wood, sunburn and other colour defects, a more effective feature extraction technique was needed. The difficulty in rot detection inspired and motivated the development team behind Buzzard®, which has since proven to be extremely adept at solving the problem.
Buzzard® generally is based on an enormous amount of data, consisting of images of boards and the defects on them, as well as information on the locations of the defects on the boards. In the early stages, a huge team effort went into analysing our customers’ requirements and constructing an efficient data pipeline that enabled further development of the solution as a whole.
Buzzard® is currently being used to detect defects on timber surfaces. It detects defects such as knots and rot, plus a more specific defect, bird eye, which is caused by needles growing into the wood material in radiata pine species in South America. For our customers, Buzzard® comes as a standard function in our Finscan scanners and provides significantly better defect detection accuracy without compromising on production capacity.
The first version of Buzzard® was released in October 2017, when it was tested and then used for the first time in production at the NK Lundströms sawmill in Sweden. The tests were a success and their impressive results encouraged and motivated further investments in AI in order to accelerate Buzzard®’s development.
The first sawmill to put Buzzard® to work for bird eye detection was the Maderas Arauco Nueva Aldea sawmill in Chile. The Finscan grading system with the Buzzard® solution was commissioned and installed on the sawmill’s dry sorting line in early 2019.
At present, 29 Finscan systems in six different countries are using the latest Buzzard® solution in defect detection. Buzzard® is continuously being developed in order to meet and exceed customers’ needs. Our product development team is constantly adopting cutting-edge technologies in our products so that our scanning systems provide maximum benefits to our customers.
Group
FinScan has joined forces with a leading manufacturer of wood scanner technologies: MiCROTEC, and is now MiCROTEC Espoo. This boosts our R&D, expands our product portfolio and enhances our service model towards even better solutions for sawmills.
We’re making the most of this opportunity to create a competitive edge and profitability for our customers with a wider range of possibilities. As part of a leading group in the wood scanner industry, we’re committed to being the reliable partner we’ve always been – just with more opportunities.
Service model
MiCROTEC Espoo is committed to local service to ensure that critical production runs as smoothly as possible. We always serve our affiliates and partners locally so that our customers can rely on us.
Always local, always available – our service is available using local resources and in the local language.
Get in touch
with us today!
With MiCROTEC, you’re always directed to our market- or country-specific sales team, who serve you locally and provide you with best options from our extensive portfolio. On some markets we serve you in cooperation with our partners and affiliates, always ensuring MiCROTEC quality.
The first step is to get in touch! Let’s work together to evaluate how to develop your sawmill for better profitability.
Local Support
We provide all of our customers with local support services to ensure the smooth and uninterrupted operation of scanners and software. Regular servicing of hardware and software is the key to optimal scanning performance.
Service Agreement
The Service Agreement is a fixed-price maintenance and technical support service for our customers.
With the Service Agreement, you ensure the regular maintenance and upkeep of both your hardware and software. This reduces the risk of scanner downtime and minimises interruptions to production. Our Service Agreement team will keep the software up-to-date via our remote access portal.
The FinScan Service Agreement includes the following:
- Local Support Hotline
- On-site inspection and maintenance program
- Remote monitoring and online support
- On-site training on scanners and software for your sawmill staff to optimise the performance of your scanners
Service Agreement advantages:
- Maintenance is always carried out on time, following a pre-planned schedule
- Scanners will always be in good condition and up to date for optimum performance
- Annual maintenance costs are predictable
- Our experts are at your service for prompt response and support
- Discounts on spare parts and additional technical services
For further information on the Service Agreement, contact Sales Manager Jyry Hyvärinen on +358 10 208 5514 or at jyry.hyvarinen@microtec.eu
Jobs
News and articles
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