On my way to the component plants that supply The Villages, the most well-known planned community in Florida, I drove through the vastly expanding reaches of America’s last remaining bastion of true production building. When I entered the new 424-acre Governor Rick Scott Industrial Park, I...

Often, when we write about BCMC, it’s after the event – when we’re looking back and reflecting on the exchanges we had, the questions we were asked, and the ideas that stayed with us long after the show floor closed. This year, I wanted to write before the event, as we look...

For years, component manufacturers have faced a classic operational dilemma: choose the high-volume speed of traditional batch cutting on component saws or opt for the simplified material flow of cut-by-truss on linear saws. Because linear saws could “stretch”/optimize lumber, this...

The Building Component Manufacturers Conference (BCMC) and Framer Summit returns to Columbus, Ohio, September 14–18, bringing together component manufacturers, suppliers, framers, and industry professionals for a week centered on practical learning, emerging technology, and face-to-face...

At the June SBCA Open Quarterly Meeting (OQM), we had the opportunity to see the latest in truss robotics and hear about a formerly overlooked engineering issue. While both experiences were worth the trip to Seattle, it was equally rewarding learning about an unfamiliar market and meeting many...

For years, I’ve seen efficiency in component manufacturing judged by how well a plant performs when conditions are stable — consistent orders, familiar product mix, reliable labor, and enough lead time to keep work flowing. But stability is not always guaranteed, and I believe that...

Affectionately dubbed 3.0, the latest generation of Enventek’s NEXPLATE injects Formula 1-style velocity to truss build tables. Building on the foundation of version 2.0 — which debuted last year at the Building Component Manufacturers Conference (BCMC) in Omaha — NEXPLATE 3.0...

It’s about time that a serious contender challenges the dominance of the roller gantry. Its life has been extended with lasers and auto-puck systems, but no upgrade so far has taken the hammer out of the hands of assemblers, its greatest drawback. The only alternative, the vertical press,...

Walk into most structural component manufacturing facilities across North America and you’ll see a familiar contrast: highly sophisticated design software upstream, increasingly automated assembly downstream — and somewhere in the middle, cutting processes that still rely heavily on...

Six decades of partnership, practical innovation, and growth: That is the legacy Alpine® celebrates as it marks its 60th anniversary. Turning the big 6-0 is something that hits some people hard, while others consider themselves lucky to reach that milestone. But a business in a competitive...