In the 1990s, two small town entrepreneurs tackled vexing cutting problems, but from very different angles, and their innovations set the table for today’s linear saw industry. Jim Urmson, working in Mt. Dora, Florida, population 14,000, started from the ground up, aiming to automate his...

Recently, in lieu of my 15-year-old son destroying my personal vehicle while working through drivers education, I decided it was safer to purchase a vehicle specifically for him. For several months, I browsed the internet, visited car lots, and test drove cars. Eventually, this became such a...

Chronic employee staffing shortages can be a blatant sign that a company’s employment practices need improvement. One should be very hesitant to blame external forces beyond a given reasonable period. Too many companies are simply blind to their overall company’s poor employee...

Let’s face some facts. Eventually your truss building equipment needs repair or replacement. Exactly when do you pull the trigger? When do you take the big jump? In a perfect world with endless resources, it’s an easy calculation—replace or repair the equipment when there is a...

For more than four decades, JL Schwieters Construction (JLS) has provided quality and dependability to the building industry. Brothers John and Leo Schwieters built the company in Hugo, Minnesota, and it has grown and built a reputation of reliability in the Twin Cities’ framing...

Some exciting developments have been in the works at Panels Plus. Not only are we launching a new product, but we’re also launching an entirely new product category, the Platinum Series, that is focused on increased automation. Our team is thrilled to announce the addition of the Platinum...

When most people think of modular buildings, they think modular homes and mobile homes. Most people don’t know about a third element in the modular building’s world, Commercial Modular. For the sake of simplicity, the commercial side of the industry has both mobile (as in mobile...

Entering the new Millennium, the linear fed saw needed to be reborn. Though CMs had boosted productivity with bolted-on improvements to their Metra-Cut type saws, they still couldn’t keep up with automated component saws. Yet they remained an essential part of the saw shop, even though...

Working in our industry in several different roles and being around equipment for a long time now, I have seen what gets a piece of machinery a good reputation – it’s reliability. I have lost count of the number of times I have been talking to someone about the old Klaisler...

Suppose you want an effective incentive program that improves productivity, saves your company labor cost, and rewards your most valued production crews with additional wages. Perhaps you also want to improve the accuracy of your production scheduling that allows for a proper understanding of...