Technology used in furniture and sawmill microsized enterprises in terms of machine attributes

Abstract

The wood products industry is an industry having a typically low level oftechnology. The size of an entity is also an important factor in terms of technology level.Generally, the tech level at larger entities is higher, and they may even have their ownresearch and development departments. However, small- and medium-size enterprises(SMEs) in both developed and emerging economies are more numerous and represent anessential part of production and employment. For these reasons, we studied machinesbeing used in micro-sized furniture and sawmills entities in terms of type, age, and placewhere their machines were produced. A face-to-face questionnaire method was used togather data. It was found that average machine ages varied according to machine type andthe mean number of machines in the enterprises was 3.4. The most frequently ownedmachine was a table saw in furniture manufacturing and vertical band saws with logcarriages in sawmills. There were weak, positive linear correlations between enterpriseage and machine age for milling machines, planers, band saws, and sliding table saws.