Millions of defects. One operator. How Pfeifer made its production viable for the future.

One of Europe's leading wood processors replaces manual patching stations with a fully automated TRC Woodpatch line – and sends a clear signal about the resilience of its production.

Pfeifer Group

Headquartered in Imst, Tyrol, the Pfeifer Group is one of the largest wood processors in Europe. It employs over 2,600 people at eight locations in Austria, Germany, and Czechia while processing around 4.4 million cubic meters of wood every year. Among its products are solid structural timber, glued laminated timber (GLT), cross-laminated timber (CLT), and raw boards for three-layer formwork panels. It is a company where industrial scaling and precision meet – and where efficiency is a competitive necessity along the entire production chain.

The shift that needed scaling.

Manual patching was a bottleneck for a company of Pfeifer's size.

The pain points

Several employees per shift were exclusively working at manual patching stations. Their time was entirely taken up with repetitive, physically demanding activities.

The consistency varied depending on the person and the shift. The quality at the end of a long night was different from the quality first thing in the morning.

In an increasingly tight labor market, filling these positions and retaining staff was becoming more challenging and more expensive from year to year.

Four-module fully automated patching line

The solution: TRC Woodpatch 4M

WINTERSTEIGER developed and commissioned a fully automated patching system for Pfeifer's raw board production for three-layer formwork panels. The solution comprised four modules, two patching lines, and no manual stations.

Product details

Automatic separation & scanning

The incoming raw boards are automatically separated, scanned, and distributed across two patching lines. No manual handling is required at the infeed.

Drilling & patching technology

An intelligent combination of drilling and patching technology identifies and repairs all types of defects (including resin deposits) on both sides of the boards in a single pass.

Cycle time of 2.1 seconds

The actual patching cycle per defect is around 2.1 seconds. Including positioning, the total time is approximately 3.5 seconds. With a production volume of millions of boards per year, this is the difference between a bottleneck and a production flow.

Quality-based sorting

After both sides of the board have been processed, the workpieces are sorted based on quality and prepared for further transport in a fully automatic process.

Summary

Pfeifer hasn't just automated a task. It has automated a structural weakness. In a labor market where qualified production employees are increasingly difficult to find every year, eliminating this dependence gives the company a competitive advantage. Every board contains more potential than manual work can consistently unlock. TRC Woodpatch doesn't just repair defects; it removes the dependence on the people who used to do this.

~2.1 sec.

Actual patching cycle per defect

1 operator

To monitor the entire automated line

Millions

Of defects detected and repaired each year

“With this investment, we're sending a clear signal about the future-readiness of our production. The new patching system gives us a decisive advantage in an increasingly challenging labor market.”

René Svatek

Head of Asset Management, Pfeifer Holding GmbH

“The cycle time per patch including positioning is approximately 3.5 seconds – the pure patching cycle is only about 2.1 seconds.”

Franz Vöcklinger

Franz Vöcklinger, WINTERSTEIGER Woodtech GmbH

What would your production look like if one operator was all you needed where you currently need several?

Talk to our automation team about TRC Woodpatch – and what a fully automated patching line could do for your capacity, quality, and workforce planning.

Talk to a TRC specialist