If it's paved with good intentions, it must also be littered with multiDAT recorders. FERIC's little black box is a symbol of all that's gone wrong, and could go right with our industry's approach to continuous improuement. The poor, misunderstood MultiDAT machine utilization recorder. Like other logging tools before it, the "black box" is mistrusted more for how it's been misused by a few than for what it is designed to do. Like the clambunk skidder (which logger got all the far wood?), steep slopebuncher (who got all the bad ground?) and multi-stem harvesting head (welcome to a steady diet of pecker poles boys), the MultiDAT is a promising concept marred by a few improper applications and some really bad PR. By now the horror stories of MultiDATsbeing used to cut logging rates are so widespread that they can't possibly all be true. Besides, mills were not short of excuses to cut rates before the MultiDAT came along, so how much blame does one little computer merit? In the end, MultiDATs don't cut rates; people do.Perhaps misunderstandings have played a role. In some cases mills no doubt invested in MultiDAT systems with the goal of sharing the benefits with their contractors, so that stagnant or even declining rates were in theory to be compensated for by higherweekly production. Logging jobs are more complicated than spreadsheets, however, and perceptions are as important as reality in any business relationship.
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