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Drones Make Timber Inventory Faster, Cheaper, and More Accurate
Updated: May 12, 2025, 09:48 Published: April 29, 2025, 10:00
Timber inventory has traditionally been a laborious and manual process, prone to significant error margins. LumberScan, a Swedish company, has developed an innovative solution that automates the process and performs it more accurately using drones.
“What previously could take an entire day to do manually, now takes about an hour,” says Christoffer Eldskott, CEO.
A key challenge for businesses handling timber and by-products is accurately estimating volumes. Traditionally, these estimates are made manually, using measuring wheels, sticks, and, at best, laser measuring devices. This method is time-consuming and often subject to errors of plus or minus 20 percent. This impacts operations, including raw material flows, work schedules, logistics, and production processes, which in turn negatively affects the bottom line.
LumberScan uses a drone to create a significantly more accurate inventory, achieving an error margin of less than one percent.
“The technology removes the human factor from the inventory process. This provides a consistent inventory result that doesn’t depend on who performed the measurements,” explains Christoffer Eldskott.
Easy to Manage LumberScan
The drone itself is easily programmed and launched. It then flies completely autonomously over the timber yard, collecting images that are analyzed by algorithms on the company’s cloud-based platform. The system automatically filters out irrelevant objects, such as spreaders or conveyor belts.
Several major players in the forestry industry, both in Sweden and internationally, are already using LumberScan.
“No advanced training is required to use our solution. We train our customers in half a day, and then anyone can manage the inventory. It could be a production manager or another employee who presses ‘play’ on the drone. No external person or technical expertise is needed,” says Christoffer Eldskott, concluding:
“We have customers who previously only inventoried once a quarter, but who can now do it every week. This allows them to control purchasing and production more precisely, radically improving productivity.”
About LumberScan
LumberScan from the Swedish company Lumber Tech Sweden is the next generation inventory system for timber and by-products. It addresses the challenges associated with traditional timber inventory methods. Lumber Tech Sweden is headquartered in Umeå.
Learn more at: www.lumberscan.com
The article is produced in collaboration with LumberScan.
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