Dr. Alan Potter

Dr. Alan Potter is an applied technology leader with over thirty years of experience in research management, process innovation and product development in wood products, pulp & paper, plastics and packaging.  He is experienced at enhancing enterprise performance and returns through the implementation of technology driven business solutions.

Dr. Potter is currently a senior advisor for FPInnovations based in Vancouver, Canada.  He has spent over a decade with FPInnovations serving in a variety of roles including vice president of strategic technologies and executive vice president. Since 2014, Dr. Potter has also served as an adjunct professor to the forestry faculty at the University of British Columbia, working part-time with UBC faculty to develop new research proposals and share his years of R&D management experience in the forest industry.  Alan has also held senior technical positions with a number of forest products companies including Crown Zellerbach, MacMillan Bloedel, and Norbord Inc.  He resides with his wife Lisa in Bellingham, WA.

In March 2019, Dr. Potter presented "Forestry 4.0 and Other Research Initiatives in the Canadian Bioeconomy". You can view a recording of the talk here.

FPInnovations' Forestry 4.0 Initiative aims to establish the foundations of a new "connected" value chain for the forest industry. The four themes which define this initiative are:

1. Real Environment: This theme is dedicated to developing technologies necessary to feed the value chain with foundational data on which monitoring, analysis and decisions can be taken along the supply chain assembler function.
2. Internet of Forests (IoF): Analogous to the IoT, this theme is the critical link in many remote and large areas of Canadian forests. The initiative activities involved represent the key enablers in the exchange of realtime data between forest sector contractors and mills.
3. NextGen Fibre Supply Chain: Under this theme, new production systems will be developed, tested and implemented. This theme is seen as the accelerator of the value chain, using data of the Real Environment to adapt actions based on user needs.
4. Data Analytics: This theme serves as an integrator of the complete upstream process to implement “smart harvesting” and artificial intelligence to the management of the Canadian forest sector value chain.

Learn more about the Forestry 4.0 Initiative.

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