Wall Panel Technology, Part VII: A Deeper Dive into Automation Joe Kannapell Toll Brothers imported an automated panel line commensurate with their luxurious homes, or so they expected. Perhaps because the European economy was ailing in the early 1990s, Randek from Sweden, like the Makron company from Finland before them, offered Toll an excellent deal. But Randek was an... Read More October 2024 Issue #16303 Page 10
Automation Worth Considering for the Building Industry Todd Drummond Automation within the building industry has been ongoing for decades but at a slower pace than other industries. So, what do we mean by automation? Let’s focus on two types: automation for building estimation and automation for roof truss manufacturing. Both will be discussed at the... Read More October 2024 Issue #16303 Page 26
Revolutionizing Frame and Truss Manufacturing: The Power of Real-Time Optimization Ed Serrano In today’s fast-paced frame and truss manufacturing environments, efficiency and waste reduction are paramount. Traditional production methods often fall short in meeting the demands of modern businesses, paving the way for Real-Time Optimization (RTO) and Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery to... Read More October 2024 Issue #16303 Page 58
Wall Panel Technology, Part VI: Panel Equipment Innovations Joe Kannapell As automation and robotics are increasingly embraced, it makes sense to review examples of successful implementations from the pioneers of past systems. Interestingly, the first successful fully automated component assembly in the U.S. involved wall panels rather than trusses. However, in many... Read More September 2024 Issue #16302 Page 10
Why Are So Many Companies Unknowingly Losing Millions? Todd Drummond Millions of dollars are being lost by many companies that don’t recognize they have a problem — Does your LBM company have more than $50 million combined sales? Quantified as a ratio of sales, according to Six Sigma case studies, the cost of poor quality, defined as waste,... Read More September 2024 Issue #16302 Page 26
MiTek to Showcase Innovative Solutions at BCMC | FS 2024 MiTek Staff As a global pioneer in the building components industry, we’re looking forward to presenting our integrated solutions suite at the upcoming Building Component Manufacturers Conference (BCMC) | Framer’s Summit 2024. Our booth at the event will feature best-in-class software, automated... Read More September 2024 Issue #16302 Page 52
Innovation Through Legacy: Transforming Truss Design with Paragon John Holland What if the future of truss design isn’t just about developing better tools, but redefining the entire process from the ground up? On August 15, we publicly announced Paragon — a product that will change the way trusses are designed and built. A product that took years of... Read More September 2024 Issue #16302 Page 80
Wall Panel Technology, Part V: Whole House Evolution Joe Kannapell The dream of having a single person model an entire structure was admirable, but developing the software to do that turned into a decade-long struggle. Five years ago, I chronicled the development saga in my series on Fifty Years of Truss Design, Parts XI – XV. As the story told, the... Read More August 2024 Issue #16301 Page 10
Retaining Profits Amid Margin Compression Todd Drummond What was widely expected has finally happened. Years of very profitable high sales led to vast increases in capacity to meet that demand, but now we have declining sales volume—the classic too much supply versus not enough demand to maintain margins. Some like to call this margin... Read More August 2024 Issue #16301 Page 24
What Can We Learn From the Recent CrowdStrike Debacle? Glenn Traylor In the early morning hours of July 19, 2024, there was a major collapse of world commerce. According to the company CrowdStrike, a defect in a content update to its Falcon cybersecurity defense software for Windows caused a world-wide crash that impacted many businesses, most notably the... Read More August 2024 Issue #16301 Page 33