The problem of lumber drying is considered. The relevance of the research is due to the need to improve the system of automated control of the technological process of drying lumber on the basis of modern information technologies, reducing the energy-intensity of these technologies, which is enshrined in the program documents of forest industry development at the governmental level. It is shown that the most effective solution will be the use of fuzzy modeling. In this case, the characteristics of the uncertainty of the input parameters and the influencing factors will be taken into account. The functional purpose of the automated control system is to provide a given level of moisture content of wood with the required quality of wood (exclusion of damage). It is extremely difficult to obtain such a functional dependence on the heating temperature in the drying chamber and equilibrium air humidity by traditional statistical methods due to the uncertainty of the parameters, therefore, the apparatus of the theory of fuzzy sets should be used for this task. The purpose of this work was to analyze researches in the field of lumber drying and substantiate the meaningful formulation of the problem of moisture content and lumber drying time modeling. The methodological basis of theoretical studies were: the drying theory, wood science, apparatus of mathematical and fuzzy modeling. The result of the research is the substantiation of the meaningful formulation of tasks of fuzzy modeling of the humidity and lumber drying time. The scientific novelty of research follows from the proposed theoretical approach to estimating the parameters of moisture content and drying time of lumber on the basis of fuzzy modeling. The practical applicability of the results lies in the possibility of using the developed problem statement for fuzzy inference of the functional dependence of the control of drying of materials.