Last month, I published “Freedom to Choose Any Plate Vendor—Without Disrupting Your Operation,” which explained why a component manufacturer (CM) needs practical supplier alternatives, not merely the ability to change vendors. This month, I’ll show how you can keep the KPIs you already trust while adding automated work minutes, gross-margin visibility, secure data ownership, and a clear path toward live management information.
When changing plate vendors could require rebuilding workflows, relocating information, retraining departments, or interrupting customer service, the CM enters negotiations with limited practical leverage. In response, the Truss WorkMinute Estimator (TWE) is being developed to reduce that dependency so management can evaluate all five major plate vendors based on pricing, engineering capability, support, responsiveness, availability, and the overall value of the relationship.
This is not about threatening good suppliers. It is about remaining with a supplier because the relationship continues to earn the business — not because the CM feels operationally trapped. That is negotiating from a position of strength.
What TWE Will Add for Management
- Continuity: Customer, project, costing, scheduling, and operating information remains available when the CM makes a legitimate plate-vendor change.
- Better costing: Existing KPIs remain in place while TWE adds automated work minutes and gross-margin comparisons for each work order.
- Control of the data: The CM controls access, database location, exports, analysis, retention, and use of its information.
- AI-ready reporting: Every report in the first release will be exportable for AI analysis while deeper AI integration is prepared around client needs.
Change Suppliers Without Rebuilding the Business
With TWE, you can accomplish a comprehensive change from one plate vendor to another with little interruption or pain. The design team makes the proper transition to the selected vendor’s engineering software and connector plates, and then the rest of the company continues operating within the same browser-based project-management environment.
Sales still has the customer history. Estimating still has the quotes and costing records. Scheduling still sees priorities and promised dates. Customer service still has communications, documents, approvals, and project status. Management still has the historical KPIs and completed-job information needed to understand performance.
Plate-vendor engineering software has an essential purpose: helping the design team produce properly engineered structural components using that vendor’s products. Broader project-management responsibilities are different. Scheduling, costing, customer communications, workflow, tasks, documents, approvals, and reporting will be managed through AppWright, a fully customizable browser-based application used daily by thousands of users.
TWE provides a standardized bridge from the selected plate vendor’s engineering information into the CM’s AppWright project-management workflow. AppWright is used daily in over a hundred CM and LBM locations every day. This integration allows the design team to remain focused on engineering while the rest of the company continues working within one consistent system.
Keep Your KPIs and Add Work Minutes
Most CMs already use board feet (BF), piece count, material markup, sales dollars, gross-margin dollars, and other common costing and production KPIs. TWE is not being developed to replace those measurements.
Management will continue using the methods it already understands and trusts. TWE adds automated work minutes based on the CM’s unique equipment and material setup.
Equipment type, lumber sizes, material choices, setup requirements, cutting methods, assembly processes, material handling, and production quantities all affect the work required. Two work orders can contain nearly the same BF and piece count yet require very different amounts of setup, cutting, assembly, and support time.
TWE will generate standardized work minutes using time-and-motion study principles, practical manufacturing experience, and lean manufacturing best practices. The structure is standardized, but the results reflect the equipment, materials, and production methods configured for the individual CM.
TWE will not ask management to abandon the KPIs it already trusts. It will connect those measurements to the manufacturing time required to produce the work.
The internal reports will compare BF, pieces, and other common units with expected work minutes. That gives management another practical way to understand how different work orders consume limited plant capacity.
Reveal Work Order Contributions to the Bottom Line
The more important comparison is gross-margin dollars.
TWE’s internal costing reports are being designed to show the total gross-margin dollars expected from a work order and how those dollars compare with the KPIs management already uses. Leadership will be able to review gross margin per BF, per piece, and per work minute alongside the work-order totals.
Gross margin is not the same as net profit, but it is the contribution each order makes toward overhead and the bottom line.
Executives need to know not only whether a job produces margin dollars, but how efficiently it produces them from limited equipment time, labor capacity, and plant space.
A work order can look attractive by BF, piece count, or total sales and still consume too much manufacturing time for the gross margin it produces. Gross margin per work minute provides management with another way to judge how effectively each work order uses limited manufacturing capacity.
Gross Margin ÷ Work Minutes = Economic Return on Production Time
Another order with fewer BF may make a stronger contribution because it moves through the plant with less setup, handling, cutting, and assembly time. TWE is intended to make that difference visible before management commits valuable capacity.
This is where the ROI becomes practical. Better information can support better bids, job selection, scheduling, overtime decisions, and earlier identification of work that needs a different price or production method. It can also help leadership decide where equipment investment, training, process improvement, or added capacity will produce the strongest return.
Busy does not always mean profitable. TWE is being developed to show which work is contributing positively and which work is using too many resources for the return it produces.
Protect the Data You’ve Earned
Customer, costing, production, and performance information are company assets. Their security, location, accessibility, and ownership should be treated that way.
The current TWE database is hosted through Amazon Web Services (AWS). Each client will also be able to select an acceptable database location, including AWS or another environment, provided it includes reliable backups, appropriate protection, and the availability required for daily operations.
Company information will be protected through user-level administrative rights. Employees will receive access based on their responsibilities, and user activity will be recorded so management can determine who accessed information, what actions were taken, and when.
The governing principle is straightforward: the data generated through TWE belongs to the CM. The company can retain, export, analyze, transfer, and use that information for its own business needs.
Software should help management control the operation, not trap critical information or make it dependent on one supplier relationship.
First Release and Upcoming Versions
The tentative target for TWE's initial production release is December 1, 2026. The first release is being developed to include:
- Compatibility with all five major plate-vendor environments
- The AppWright project-management connection
- Automated work minutes based on CM equipment and material selections
- Comparisons with BF, pieces, other familiar KPIs, and gross-margin dollars
- Role-based user access and recorded user activity
- Reports exportable for AI analysis
Full AI integration is still pending, but preparation is underway. Client responses will help determine which AI capabilities provide practical management value without compromising data security, ownership, or confidential business information.
The tentative spring 2027 development plan includes tracking actual shop labor and comparing it directly with estimated TWE work minutes. Management will be able to see where performance matches expectations, where a standard may need adjustment, and where equipment, staffing, training, material flow, or the production process needs attention.
TWE is also intended to integrate with existing manufacturing equipment for file handling and additional operating needs.
The long-term objective is to bring the CM’s useful operating data into one secure management environment for live, near-real-time operational visibility and analysis. Leadership should be able to compare actual performance with expectations, identify issues sooner, and act while there is still time to improve the result.
Freedom With Responsibility
TDC fully supports proper agreements between plate vendors and component manufacturers. TWE will not encourage or assist a CM in using one plate vendor’s engineering software with another vendor’s connector plates unless the engineering software provider has given express permission.
Each CM remains responsible for understanding and honoring its plate-vendor contracts, software licenses, product approvals, engineering requirements, and related obligations. Supplier freedom and contractual integrity can and should exist together.
Come talk with me in Booth 817 at BCMC in September. I would like to hear how your company measures BF, pieces, gross margin, capacity, and labor — and what it would mean to compare those familiar KPIs with standardized work minutes in one secure management environment.
Todd Drummond Consulting helps manufacturers identify what is limiting performance, whether it begins with workflow, labor visibility, capacity planning, training, scheduling, handoffs, or leadership decisions. With nearly 40 years of manufacturing experience and almost 25 years as a full-time consultant, I provide practical guidance that helps leaders simplify work, improve flow, reduce waste, protect margins, and move forward with confidence. Review my client testimonials to see what other manufacturers have said about working with Todd Drummond Consulting.
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