Structural building component manufacturers across North America often track metrics like walls, floors, and trusses shipped each day, labor hours per unit, machine uptime, and on-time delivery. These numbers are important, but they don’t tell the whole story. There’s a quieter...

I’ve been to Boston a few times, but like most business and installation trips, it usually goes the same way: fly into the airport, drive a few hours, get the work done, and head straight back home. There’s never any time to actually pause and “stop to smell the...

Good people show up. They work hard. They care. Yet output still stalls, quality still slips, due dates still move, and managers still spend too much of their day answering questions, expediting work, and solving the same problems again and again. Because when work is unclear, effort gets...

When we launched JAX over 2½ years ago, we knew we were building something special even though JAX breaks no new ground in technology. JAX uses a proven industrial-grade material handling system combined with vacuum-operated lumber pickup heads, which can be configured in multiple ways to...

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...

Let’s face it: growth is exciting, scary, and a great problem to tackle. But in component manufacturing, increased demand can quickly expose pressure points on the floor. What once felt smooth starts to feel tight. Work in progress (WIP) builds up and becomes expensive. Teams must work...

For inspiration to Feed the Beast! in 2026, the mandate is clear to automate, however, the path to automation looks different depending on your starting point. Let’s compare two standout 2025 LimTek installations—a greenfield plant and a modernizing retrofit—to see how...

Board foot has been used for decades in component manufacturing, and it still serves its purpose for sales reporting, legacy KPIs, and corporate roll ups. There is no need to abandon it. But for scheduling, pricing, and determining how much work a plant can actually handle, board foot alone will...

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...