The idea of SDM begun in the fall of 1987 during a discussion at Rockhammar sawmill about a plastic board for saw pattern analysis and a lot of drawings illustrating different saw patterns. In the end the plastic board and paper drawings were abandoned and in its place the software Sawing Decision Maker was created. The first program was sold in the spring of 1988 to Orrefors skogar and the second to Toftan sawmill. Mats Nylinder and Lars Jonsson who was responsible for the programming started a company, N-J Virkesteknologi AB.
The business continued in cooperation with Silvana Inc in Canada and ES-Elect Oy in Finland. Up to the middle of the 1990’s there were about 100 SDM programs sold to mills in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada and Chile. One version of the program made it easy to change between European units in mm to North American units, inch and feet. This feature was very appreciated in Canada as they were in a period for changing to European units. The program generated several consulting assignments. At that time SDM were written in three language, Finish, Swedish and English.
In the end of the 1990’s the program was markeded by Sam Wernius Development AB. Several competitors appeared where new and more modern types of programming was used. SDM was still sold as a CD-disc and had seen its best days. The CD version is however still used at some mills.
By coincidence Mats Nylinder and Johan Annerstedt met in 2015 and SDM got a “rebirth”. Thanks to a lot of positive support from several Finish and Swedish companies SDM have turned in to a new and more advanced program. The company Kråkfors Forest Products AB was founded in October of 2018 and gained ownership of the program, the development of SDM continues and an adaptation to the next generation of software technology has begun.
