As all prefabricated wall panel manufacturers know, you are always trying to predict the amount of wall panels required for your business daily. You need to know what their true cost is and when they will be delivered to your customer, and all of this needs to happen efficiently and on time....

“Are you crazy? We are not going to move our saw! We cannot afford to shut down for weeks to turn things upside down.” Those are words I’ve heard more than once, but it turns out I am not crazy. Saws can be moved and the process improvement can be accomplished in days and not...

Today, as an industry, we build faster, cut faster, design faster – thanks to technology and the automation it enables. The offsite construction industry is built on smarter design, more efficient fabrication. Whether in the office or on your plant floor, automation is very much a part of...

Over the last few weeks and into the next few months, we’re busy outfitting a new Truss, Frame, and Floor Manufacturing site with Spida machinery. All of our installations with customers are something special, and they are all unique with their own set of requirements to make the install...

What weighs more, a pound of muscle or a pound of fat? In truss jargon, the question would be: What produces more trusses, 200 pieces of batch cutting or 200 pieces of cut-by-truss cutting? The answer, of course, is that both cutting methods produce the same number of trusses. So what’s...

Until recently, vertical members have been the bane of all jigging systems, whether they occur on the perimeter or the interior of trusses. And they are found more than ever on apartment and residential designs. Handling these members without human intervention has been the Achilles heel of...

To complete this floor series, it’s worth examining how we’re doing against I-joists. [For all graphs and images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.] Mixed Signals: Many CMs think trusses are slowly making gains, and this is backed up by the brisk sales of floor machines. However,...

Over 7 years ago, we introduced the first of our new generation Spida Wall Extruders to the market. Today, we have taken a massive step further and it just keeps getting better. Recently demonstrated at BCMC 2023, the Spida Raked Wall Extruder can do it all – and it is only one part of an...

The winter months are normally the time to make changes to your processes within your area of influence. Depending on how your company is structured for decision-making, your influence and actions to stay competitive in the face of ever-increasing challenges will determine the long-term...

Catching and stacking lumber can make or break productivity at the truss build tables. In an imaginary world where money is irrelevant, a linear saw in front of each automated truss jig would be ideal, cutting pieces in order from, let’s say, 60 ft finger-joined lumber, and robots grabbing...