Prior to the start of my 2024 internship term, I received a call from the Mill Manager asking if I would be interested in working a term in the shipping department as a Shipping Assistant as opposed to another quality control term in the sawmill. I accepted the opportunity and was looking forward to branching out my experience from the mill floor to the office. I was a little nervous coming into it, as the only shipping experience I had was from a forklift and not from an office coordination standpoint. With the support, knowledge, and environment the Interfor Adams Lake team holds, it has been nothing but successful so far.
A day-to-day job in the shipping office consists of pre-emptively setting up delivery slips and load diagrams for domestic, U.S., and export shipments via truck and rail. Since every board that comes out of Adams Lake is shipped by truck, external reloads are used as holding yards and for railcar loading. In the shipping office, we are constantly monitoring our reloads inventory and mill inventory to maximize FIFO while fulfilling customer orders on time. A non-shipping related task that is a crucial part of the Shipping Assistant’s role is to create and input production work orders into our data collection systems. This is done so the Production Coordinator can forecast further production for the sawmill, planer, and kilns. The role of the Shipping Assistant requires problem-solving, as load tallies sometimes need revisions on the spot. This means communication with the forklift drivers in the yard, communication with the sales team, and revisions to inventory. Sawmill and planer lookahead schedules are your best friends in this role. These come in handy when releasing shipments and planning for shipments as stock can be forecasted. Through my term, I have also had the opportunity to join a weekly virtual meeting with the sales team, finishing end teams, and shipping teams from across the company's B.C. Interior operations. This meeting overviews each mill’s operating schedules, shipping status, sales status, and market status.
When creating load diagrams for shipments out of the mill, we take into account many factors to create the “perfect truck”. A perfect truck means the right amount of weight and board footage. Lengths, species, and moisture content will all determine what your weight and FBM will accumulate to. I took on the task of creating a mixed species board footage calculator spreadsheet. This spreadsheet calculates how much board footage of each species you can load onto one truck to create that “perfect truck”.
Lastly, another crucial part of working in the shipping department consists of month-end inventory counting. Month-end inventory counting is a manual count of all rough and dry lumber inventory on site, done at the end of each month. From sawmill bin’s, kiln infeed’s and outfeed’s, planer bin’s, bander, and the yard’s, every board is accounted for. This is done so inventory can be reconciled to what the systems show while also ensuring everything correlates.
