Education on Wood Use Important to Marketplace Robert Glowinski Every day, component manufacturers are dealing with the entire spectrum of traditional and engineered wood products. In fact, educating your customers may be a key factor in your sales and services. Like you, the American Wood Council (AWC) sees how important education on wood can be to... Read More March 2019 Issue #11236 Page 76
How Does a Fabricator Gain From a 3rd Party Audit? Glenn Traylor When a 3rd party inspector inspects a licensed plant, what exactly are the auditors looking for? And what can the fabricator get from the experience? What the inspection is NOT, and why that matters: The part 1 audit of the in-house paperwork is not a grade on neatness. It’s an... Read More February 2019 Issue #11235 Page 34
Is Automation the Right Direction to Take? Glenn Traylor After recently upgrading to a newer vehicle, I have been amazed at the new safety features. While it’s not self-driving, the features are definitely approaching an autonomous car. The basic functions are things like active cruise control with the “stop&go” function, which... Read More January 2019 Issue #11234 Page 32
New Report Available on Sound Transmission of Wood-Framed Assemblies Robert Glowinski The American Wood Council (AWC) has released a new report on sound transmission, “Technical Report 15 (TR15), Calculation of Sound Transmission Parameters for Wood-Framed Assemblies.” This first version of TR15 is applicable to wood-frame floor-ceiling assemblies. A free pdf copy... Read More November 2018 Issue #10232 Page 74
Questions Answered: Making Wood Connections Work for Two-Hour Fire Walls Paul McEntee In this article, Paul McEntee follows up on our July 25 webinar, Making Wood Connections Work for Two-Hour Fire Walls, by answering some of the interesting questions raised by attendees. We presented an hour-long webinar recently about using fire wall hangers in Type III wood-frame buildings,... Read More November 2018 Issue #10232 Page 90
The Relationship Between Lean and Safety Ben Hershey In my experience and with the work I do with hundreds of component manufacturers, I find that many companies will tell me Safety is important, but, in practice, safety is treated as a burden on the company. Good managers will always have an attitude that they want all of their employees to be... Read More August 2018 Issue #10229 Page 24
Seeing the Need for Quality Assurance AND Training Glenn Traylor When you look at this photo, what do you see? The photo is an actual picture taken during a plant audit, but just imagine this was taken at your truss plant. In the photo, the second side of the floor truss is set up in the floor machine with the connector plate positioned and ready to receive... Read More January 2018 Issue #10222 Page 36
Skills Play a Vital Role in Lean Management Ben Hershey 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... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 44
Lumber Briefs: Housing’s Growth Rings Matt Layman Housing Inventory Looking Bullish Seven years later, the Great Recession now a memory, and as many years of construction growth behind us, the US housing situation is “critical.” We have added fewer new single family homes over the last decade than any of the previous five... Read More July 2017 Issue #10216 Page 73
When Competitors Attack Robert Glowinski Lately, competing building materials have been using construction fires as an opportunity to attack wood construction. It’s true; fires do occur in buildings under construction. But they occur in buildings of all material types, including concrete and steel. However, because wood... Read More June 2017 Issue #10215 Page 65