So Who Exactly is Responsible for Lumber Quality? Glenn Traylor In the United States, we are blessed with an abundance of quality building materials we may chose to use while fabricating our wood truss products. As long as we are able to confidently predict lumber values and our truss design software has the proper values entered, we can be assured a quality... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 34
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
Onerous Wood Dust Proposal Modified in California Robert Glowinski In 2016, the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA) proposed to significantly lower the permissible exposure limit (PEL) of wood dust from 5 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) to 1 mg/m3. Earlier this year the Cal/OSHA Standards Board considered that proposal.... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 69
Lumber Briefs: Robotics: Labor Solution and The Future of the Housing Matt Layman The housing industry has been begging for workers going on a decade now. The American citizen work force is not answering the call. Consequently, housing construction has become completely dependent on undocumented workers. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics technology are... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 71
Is Your Organization Ready for Change? Keith Parker The pace of today’s business requires agility and the ability to change. But beware, “change” can be difficult on you, your staff, and your company. Sometimes change is accomplished with small steps, other times you might have to destruct the very structures that have taken... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 72
Remote Designer’s Glass Ceiling The Glass Ceiling is not just a gender or education-based obstacle, it can sometimes be created by career path choices. In our industry, a new Glass Ceiling is coming from Truss Designers deciding to pursue a Home-Based (Remote) position. By remote, we’re talking about at least 4 hours... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 83
Introducing the New and Improved Simpson Strong-Tie® Strong-Wall® Bracing Selector Caleb Knudson It’s been said that the World Wide Web is the wave of the future. Okay, maybe this is slightly outdated news, as it’s been 25 years since Bill Gates penned his internet tidal-wave memorandum, but it’s a good lead-in to this topic – web apps. More specifically, those apps... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 86
The Last Word: BCMC Athletics – A Perfectly Roaring Success Joe Kannapell Look at these folks in the picture (I am not naming names) and tell me that they look like a bunch of sterling athletes. None of them excels at running, all are just trying to maintain reasonable conditioning, while having a little fun. One has lost 30 pounds in the last year when he started... Read More November 2017 Issue #10220 Page 97
Advertiser Forum: Supporting Our Causes Anna Stamm The devastation brought by the recent hurricanes has shown us again how people will come together at times of crisis. It is deeply reassuring to see the outpouring of support—both money and manpower—to help those whose lives have been impacted by the storms and their... Read More October 2017 Issue #10219 Page 4
BCMC Innovations Joe Kannapell The quickening of innovation will be on display at BCMC this month, and, undoubtedly, so will be the uptake. Suppliers use this platform to launch new products, sometimes rather humbly. Art DePauw sold his prototype “automated” saw to two industry giants, Charlie Barnes and Dave... Read More October 2017 Issue #10219 Page 6