One of the main tasks in large sawmills is the selection of suitable sectional views for the production of boards and beams. Therefor complex technical requirements of the saws, the available logs, and economic aspects need to be considered. Since it is often impossible to meet all objectives best possible, one hat to weigh the alternatives and select a good compromise.

To cope with this planning task the ITWM developed a decision support system that provides a consistent look at a variety of different sectional views and shows such views representing sensible compromises between different objectives. In particular, the inclusion of economic considerations allows it to better match production to market requirements. It is often usefull to prefer better saleability over maximizing volume utilization.

The system can be adapted to different requirements of various sawing lines and is based on established decision-making processes in sawmills.