I had lunch last week with Mark Townsend of Louisiana Helicam. 

Mark is on the leading edge of using RPAs (or drones if you prefer) in pulp and paper mill applications.  One area he is impacting is measuring chip piles.  He is winning contracts to replace piloted airplanes for the purpose of doing monthly inventory measurement of chip piles.

Admittedly, this is something of an esoteric exercise path I am leading us down this week, but it is demonstrative of the changes that are coming on all fronts that can impact how we build and operate the mill of the future.

Let's assume Mark's RPA, which weighs less than ten pounds with its camera, is replacing a Cessna 172, which weighs 2,450 pounds (maximum takeoff weight).  Mark wins the award of the year for weight reduction!  But not so fast...Mark has to drive to the site in an SUV that likely weighs more than the Cessna, although the fuel use is likely less than the Cessna. 

However, take this down the road a few years. Will RPA use for chip pile measurements and so forth become so simple that the mill will own their own RPA?  That is a real possibility.  For we see RPAs going from being specialized tools handled by experts such as Mark to being treated as "merely" another instrument in the mill.