TrueBuild® Batch – Time Is Money Tracy Roe Now more than ever, every process, every motion, literally every minute counts for a component manufacturer. The saying “Time Is Money” couldn’t be more true in our industry. Ultimately, a component manufacturer is simply selling time. They are selling the value they add to raw... Read More January 2023 Issue #15282 Page 19
Turning Supply Chain Constraints Into Opportunities Edmond Lim, P.Eng. Looking back at my articles in 2022, have you noticed what several have in common? Consider the plants featured in these stories: United Edge Structural Components, “In-Line Truss Production Starts With Lumber Picking” (December) United Truss, “The Most Automated, Most... Read More January 2023 Issue #15282 Page 52
A Vekta Trip Down Under Aaron Bahner For anyone who’s ever wanted to take a trip Down Under, I have the perfect reason for you to go – visiting Vekta! December brought an exciting opportunity for me to make my first trip to visit the Vekta headquarters and factory in Perth, Australia. I started as the General Manager of... Read More January 2023 Issue #15282 Page 60
Truss Properties Manager with IntelliVIEW Suite 22.02 John Croll The Truss Properties Manager makes it easier for designers to review the trusses in the job and confirm they are designed as expected. Truss designers must consider a variety of factors when creating designs. They are expected to work quickly to produce low-cost and highly accurate jobs per... Read More January 2023 Issue #15282 Page 76
The Development of the Truss Plate, Part V: Frenetic First Get-Together Joe Kannapell Twelve competitors faced one another for the first time—but only because they had to. Each of their fledgling plate businesses was threatened by a July 31 deadline from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and they had less than three weeks to put together a design criterion for... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 10
Creating Capacity Through Efficiency Tracy Roe With today’s high-demand market conditions, capacity is everything. Capacity constraints are widespread across our industry and have been for a while now. Many have added the capacity they can afford in the form of additional equipment. Some have been fortunate enough to add labor to... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 46
In-Line Truss Production Starts With Lumber Picking Edmond Lim, P.Eng. This month, we get a sneak peek at a greenfield truss plant that drank from the same punch bowl as some established truss plants to Feed the Beast! Previous articles have highlighted existing truss plants that have literally banked on Enventek’s proven in-line lean manufacturing system to... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 54
The Last Word: The Last Word on Automated Material Handling Joe Kannapell With automated saws and auto-jigging tables, what remains is automated material handling, and that’s what we find at Builders FirstSource’s (BFS) Austin plant. House of Design’s (HoD) robotic roof line there extends the floor truss pre-plating methodology found at their Atlanta... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 144
The Development of the Truss Plate, Part IV: Competition Intensifies Joe Kannapell After Cal Jureit’s impressive debut at the 1958 NAHB Show, lumberyards and builders across America were anxious to start trussing, but they encountered several obstacles. Their deluge of inquiries couldn’t all be answered, and most were far away from the South Florida source of... Read More November 2022 Issue #14280 Page 10
Having a Plan for Tomorrow Tracy Roe The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with the origin of the phrase, The only constant in life is change. This couldn’t be more true in the world we live and work in today. Whether we are enduring labor shortages, a global pandemic, material shortages, input cost increases, or an... Read More November 2022 Issue #14280 Page 44