Component manufacturers are operating in a market with little room for waste. Housing demand is difficult to predict. Material prices shift quickly. Labor is expensive and difficult to find. Customers still expect competitive pricing, dependable schedules, and fast turnaround. Those pressures...

Are you ready to see JAX-XL retrieve materials for a lumberyard the way JAX retrieves lumber for a truss plant? In our BCMC booth, you’ll be able to track the movement of lumber and sheet goods from bunks to staging areas live on a monitor via 3D digital twin technology, all without manual...

For years, component manufacturers have faced a classic operational dilemma: choose the high-volume speed of traditional batch cutting on component saws or opt for the simplified material flow of cut-by-truss on linear saws. Because linear saws could “stretch”/optimize lumber, this...

When The Truss Company purchased its first RetroC component saw in 2014, the company was understandably skeptical. At the time, the RetroC was still a relatively new product, and some questioned whether it could hold up in a high-volume production environment. The saw would be expected to...

In the mid-20th century, Toyota revolutionized manufacturing with a clear idea: eliminate waste, optimize the flow of value, and improve continuously. Lean manufacturing changed how physical goods are built by putting the worker’s time and effort at the center of every decision. At...

As discussed in The Last Word in May, “John Houlihan’s Contributions,” John Houlihan introduced a proven way to manage plant labor, applying his trade to plant systems as they were, rather than how they could be, which was reflective of his background outside our industry. When...

Frame and truss machinery has always competed on mechanical engineering design, and it still does. But, when you ask a plant manager where the day-to-day pain and gains in their plant actually come from, increasingly the answer is software. Throughput, uptime, operator experience — these...

Affectionately dubbed 3.0, the latest generation of Enventek’s NEXPLATE injects Formula 1-style velocity to truss build tables. Building on the foundation of version 2.0 — which debuted last year at the Building Component Manufacturers Conference (BCMC) in Omaha — NEXPLATE 3.0...

Two highly consequential labor-saving innovations were hatched at the 1993 National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Show at the Astrodome complex in Houston, Texas. Outside the Astrodome, two identical model homes were being framed side-by-side, proving the labor savings of components....

In hockey, “Dump and Chase” is highly effective depending on how deep the puck is dumped into the opposing team’s defensive zone, and how hard the dumping team will chase and fight to get back possession of the puck. The strategy is to physically punish the defending team and...