Celebrating 50 Years of Truss Design Innovation, Part IX Joe Kannapell Part IX: Windows into Truss Design Two unstoppable waves merged to form the tsunami that swept over truss design in the 1990s. The first was the mass commercialization of the PC, accelerated by Michael Dell in the late 1980s. The second was the graphical user interface (GUI), exploited by our... Read More April 2019 Issue #11237 Page 8
Effective Ways Leaders Solve Problems Ben Hershey With as many problems as we all face in our work and life, it seems as if there is never enough time to solve each one without dealing with some adversity along the way. Problems keep mounting so fast that we find ourselves taking shortcuts to temporarily alleviate the tension points, so we... Read More April 2019 Issue #11237 Page 38
Celebrating 50 Years of Truss Design Innovation Joe Kannapell Part VIII: Layout Without Windows At BCMC in Jacksonville in 1990, the PC had begun to “steal the show,” especially that of the upstart A.C.E.S. Their layout program was a quantum leap over the decade old work of C&G Micrographics on the Apple Computer. It also had several... Read More March 2019 Issue #11236 Page 8
Success Through Failure Ben Hershey “I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan While it... Read More March 2019 Issue #11236 Page 20
Celebrating 50 Years of Truss Design Innovation Joe Kannapell Part VII: A Computer for Every Designer In 1980, for the first time, I witnessed the PC doing trusses. Then, over the next 10 years, I watched that machine take over every designer’s desktop. Getting to that end, though, wasn’t easy. Unprecedented technological change roiled our... Read More February 2019 Issue #11235 Page 8
Celebrating 50 Years of Truss Design, Part VI Joe Kannapell Part VI: Desktop Engineering Rocks the Design World One man, an accomplished CM, set out to ramp-up the efficiency of truss designers in the Eighties: Mr. Leonard Sylk. He did it by pioneering the in-house computer, and its user-friendly software. By use of this tool, he envisioned a plant... Read More January 2019 Issue #11234 Page 8
Taking Steps Toward Manufacturing & Distribution Efficiency Ben Hershey As we start the New Year, a focus of many operations will be setting goals to remain competitive. Today’s companies in the LBM/Component/Modular market are looking for ways to drive efficiencies throughout their manufacturing processes. Extending Lean Manufacturing principles and practices... Read More January 2019 Issue #11234 Page 17
Looking Back at 2018 and 2019 Outlook Robert Glowinski As 2018 draws to a close, the American Wood Council (AWC) looks back on what has been a very successful year for wood industry markets. Both federally and in the states, the opportunity for wood products has been greatly expanded, building codes have been very successfully updated to account for... Read More January 2019 Issue #11234 Page 78
Good Ideas Come from Many Places — “Necessity Is the Mother of Invention” Steve Rotzin You never know where the next great product idea or innovation is going to come from — some of our best new ideas originate with the customers who use our current products. At Simpson Strong-Tie, we welcome any inspiration that can help us serve our customers’ needs even better. With... Read More January 2019 Issue #11234 Page 94
Celebrating 50 Years of Truss Design, Part V Joe Kannapell Part V: A Prequel to Hands-On Design When Lou Lewis showed our engineers his $395 HP35 calculator in 1973, they barely blinked, but several in the truss industry did recognize its value. Perhaps we were too focused on our mainframe computer, and too invested in the programs that we had... Read More December 2018 Issue #10233 Page 8