Last updated on 16/06/2025
I love a good case study. AI never crops up in the ways you think it will. Here’s a discussion of optimization for the lumber industry that I first gave at Nebraska.Code() back in ’23, with many thanks to the folks at Amegala for putting on that show, and my colleague Tait for shooting a video of the presentation.
Abstract
When solving a problem, there are more outcomes to consider than computation resources and solution quality. Sometimes, the right choice of algorithm can hinge on a company’s market differentiators. This talk is a case study of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled system we built for optimizing the production of dimensional lumber, like a 2×4.
We’ll discuss how our choice of algorithm was heavily influenced by the company’s focus on ecological impact, as well as the constraints of their industrial environment. We’ll additionally discuss how using AI changed how we estimated the software, built our team, and educated our client, a hardware company, on how software is built.