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Can you feel it? The end of the year is approaching fast. It’s funny how time doesn’t fly at a constant speed, but rather it seems to quicken or slow depending on how much is happening. Now that it’s November, it will keep moving fast until New Years. Time to Say...

This year’s Show, some 45 years after my first, brought some amazing revelations. The most awesome sight was an actual working truss plant on the Show floor. The most intriguing experience was being transported inside a robotic plant. And, the most welcome sounds were good economic...

For the nearly 1,500 attendees at the 2017 BCMC, a clear majority perused the Square 1 Design booth. Witnessing a more efficient way an individual person could stack more than four roof truss setups, or could produce more than 1,250 lineal feet of wall panels. It took considerable effort to...

Truss designers be aware: energy codes are changing HVAC systems. Until recently, duct layouts were designed like truss layouts of the 1970s – hand-drawn on blue prints. Since Building Officials don’t require residential heating/AC layouts, you may have not known of collisions until...

A current trend in our industry is that the component manufacturers are being advised that one should have a fully automated lumber retrieval system linked to an automated linear saw that pushes the cut lumber directly to the assembly table with an auto puck system. This type of setup is often...

In the United States, we are blessed with an abundance of quality building materials we may chose to use while fabricating our wood truss products. As long as we are able to confidently predict lumber values and our truss design software has the proper values entered, we can be assured a quality...

Part 8 in our TIMWOODS Series Our journey through the various waste topics in Lean brings us to the final letter in our series on TIMWOODS: Skills. Many companies, managers, and supervisors forget when improving their operations to look at their team and review how their skills are being...

In 2016, the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA) proposed to significantly lower the permissible exposure limit (PEL) of wood dust from 5 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) to 1 mg/m3. Earlier this year the Cal/OSHA Standards Board considered that proposal....

The housing industry has been begging for workers going on a decade now. The American citizen work force is not answering the call. Consequently, housing construction has become completely dependent on undocumented workers. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics technology are...

The pace of today’s business requires agility and the ability to change. But beware, “change” can be difficult on you, your staff, and your company. Sometimes change is accomplished with small steps, other times you might have to destruct the very structures that have taken...