For the production of veneer, massive logs of coniferous trees are used. In this video you can see how the automatic conveyor line for processing wood into veneer works.

 Factories in China and Japan tend to be very clean and well organized. Not sure if this is a new plant, or if new equipment, but there wasn't a speck of dust, bark, or wood waste. Log size was impressive. In America, we are optimized to use smaller wood stock at higher throughput rate. Looks like in this plant, they are using bigger stock at slower throughput rate. The guy making video with his tablet might be part of manufacturing process team documenting work flow for training purposes.  The knife that cuts the log is barely seen in this film, but is the centre piece of the process. Long ago I made "knives" for peeling. Some were 3 metres long. And they had to be true to 1/1,000 of an inch. When the wood is veneered it then goes to either a veneer seller or a plywood plant where the layers are glued and pressed to make "plywood".  Wonderful programming episode that i never seen about how to slice a truck  of a timbers into the several pieces of plywooden sheets.
Its a wonderful and knowledge enhancing!