No Excuses, Just Hard Work Edmond Lim, P.Eng. As everyone in our industry knows, there’s always another challenge on the horizon. While writing this article in late February, much of North America is experiencing another Polar Vortex. It’s perhaps ironic that our first Polar Vortex was in 2019, right in the middle of the run on... Read More March 2023 Issue #15284 Page 46
Building Your Own Home – Part I: Becoming the GC With an 8-acre property in Southern Indiana, I’ve begun the process of building a home, shop, and needed infrastructure so that Beth and I can put down roots again and have our forever home. The process has been a challenge, even for someone who has been involved with building many... Read More March 2023 Issue #15284 Page 74
Creating Solutions with Labor-Saving Equipment Wendy Boyd When arriving back to work after Christmas holidays, I had a few hundred emails to work through and a multitude of other tasks to conquer so I’d be up to speed again for 2023. One of the most compelling emails I had was from a Truss and Wall Fabricator who was appealing to me to help solve... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 17
Money Hides Many Sins (Waste) Todd Drummond A trending DIY post shows a long sequence of nail holes alongside a wall-mounted TV with a caption that says, “I knew that stud was in there somewhere.” Meant to be a humorous poke at the times when we’ve attempted new projects, it reveals how sometimes we might not have been... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 24
Has Your Guideline Shifted? Glenn Traylor Recently after receiving a phone call from a client, I reflected on our conversation. I was a little caught off guard with the direction the conversation took and felt like I needed to make a few issues clear. And, it has led me to reflect on boundaries and guidelines – why they exist and... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 35
Dependability in an Uncertain Environment Tracy Roe The most popular outlook for 2023 that I have heard is uncertainty. Nobody has a clear picture of what the new year will bring for our industry. Large investments have been made in talent, equipment, and infrastructure to capitalize on the increased demand over the past two years. What about... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 42
Setting the Goal of One Thousand Pieces per Hour Edmond Lim, P.Eng. A “Thousand Pieces an Hour” is a golden truss production metric and a lofty goal for many component plants. If one thousand is the magic number, even at 75% efficiency, in a 7-hour shift (7 hours x 1,000 pieces/hour, at 75%) that would be 5,250 pieces with potential to achieve 7,000... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 48
Is 2022 Like 2006? It wasn’t very long ago, so many of us remember the Great Recession and fear we are going to see a repeat. Hopefully not. It seems regional right now, like it did early in 2007, after the job market had raged in 2006 and the good times rolled! Like in 2006, the 2022 hiring season... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 78
Advertiser Forum: False Choices and Two-Dimensional Thinking Anna Stamm When someone in management starts complaining about how the problem is “we need change but people don’t want to change,” I wonder how deeply they’ve evaluated the real dynamics in play. If you simply dismiss employee resistance as “resistance to change,” then... Read More January 2023 Issue #15282 Page 6
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