Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is everywhere we look lately. From health care to education to manufacturing operations, AI leaders claim their applications will improve productivity and streamline business processes in every way imaginable. Some say it will replace jobs, while others...

Six decades of partnership, practical innovation, and growth: That is the legacy Alpine® celebrates as it marks its 60th anniversary. Turning the big 6-0 is something that hits some people hard, while others consider themselves lucky to reach that milestone. But a business in a competitive...

When business gets tougher, hidden weaknesses stop being minor frustrations and start becoming profit leaks. Leaders cannot afford recurring quality issues, unclear job status, missed follow-up, or managers spending hours chasing information that should already be visible. Most companies do...

Stepping into the CEO role at Paragon comes at an interesting moment, both for our company and for the building components industry as a whole. Paragon recently turned ten years old. In software, especially software aimed at a domain as technically demanding as structural components, most of...

Sometimes, a designed and engineered connection will appear to look like a member to member gap. Because of that, we need to ask the question: should the truss designer always try to eliminate a member to member gap in a truss? Generally speaking, yes, it’s always worthwhile, but there are...

The “Inspect” tool in Plate Monitor (Joint Properties) is a little known and certainly underutilized tool in the Truss Studio design software that can help you quickly deal with joint plating changes and issues. [For all images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.] We developed this tool...

In the middle of the largest residential construction show in the world, wedged between estimating software and the kitchen and bath aisle, our small booth was focused on one question: where do structural components truly fit in the future of homebuilding? The International Builders Show...

CS Producer, Simpson Strong-Tie’s component manufacturing management solution, provides real-time truss plant feedback and production scheduling functionality, in a modern, user-friendly interface. Since its introduction in 2025, CS Producer continues to add new features and...

Pretty much everyone in manufacturing has heard the Toyota example. It’s often held up as the gold standard for quality and continuous improvement, especially the andon cord, which allows any worker to stop the line when something does not seem right. The familiar takeaway is quality...

When I was notified we’d been selected by Construction Tech Review as the Cloud-Based Lumber Purchasing Platform of the Year 2026, I was very surprised, and I hadn’t even known we were nominated. But, as I thought about this news, I realized how grateful I am for the trust and...