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There is a quiet transformation happening in the management offices of North American truss plants. When owners and general managers audit their design rooms, they usually look through a single tactical lens: Today. On paper, the immediate challenge seems straightforward. You scan the queue, see...

I recently talked with Lenny Sylk and Dick Rotto, two of the most consequential figures in component manufacturing. They are men whose legacies are worth knowing, even a half century distant from their industry-founding work.  Both were consummate entrepreneurs, with the guts to start...

There is a persistent bottleneck in North American truss plants. As operations expand, the need for a dedicated Design Manager becomes critical. Owners and general managers naturally turn to their top-producing Senior Designer, offering them a promotion to lead the department. Yet, increasingly,...

Every project begins the same way: a set of plans, a stack of details, and thousands of decisions waiting to be made. Somewhere between the architect’s vision and the completed structure lies a process filled with interpretation, calculation, coordination, and estimation. For decades,...

There is a strange double standard in how component manufacturing plants allocate capital. Owners and general managers often view sales and production as the ultimate profit centers, treating the design department as a necessary evil: a cost center eating overhead without generating tangible...

By July, most manufacturing leaders already have a good idea how the year is going. They know where orders are strong. They know where labor is tight. They know which customers are creating pressure. They know which departments are struggling to keep up. But the more important question is not...

There is a quiet transformation happening in the backrooms of North American truss plants. Faced with a chronic shortage of experienced local design talent and unyielding demand for faster turnarounds, owners and general managers are turning to overnight, overseas design services. On paper, the...

When business gets tougher, hidden weaknesses stop being minor frustrations and start becoming profit leaks. Leaders cannot afford recurring quality issues, unclear job status, missed follow-up, or managers spending hours chasing information that should already be visible. Most companies do...

Ghosting has become a common occurrence, but in the hiring world, it carries real consequences. At its core, ghosting happens when one party simply stops responding, even though a level of engagement had been established. In the building components manufacturing industry, and in my role as a...

In my 30+ years in this industry, I’ve seen some of the most sophisticated automation money can buy. We have saws that think faster than humans and auto-jigging systems that move with surgical precision. But here is the cold, hard truth: the most critical piece of infrastructure in your...