Who is the most important person in your truss operation? The designer who creates the projects? The guy who signs the check? Without sales there is no business, so is it sales? Let’s make an argument for someone you might take for granted. There is a person who looks at every job – every truss – who is in a position to effectively ensure the product meets general requirements. It’s the truss stacker!
The truss stacker fulfills a vital role in your operation, yet often this position is filled by the newest, greenest, employee with little or no training. For those who choose to put the new person here, what can be done to maximize the effectiveness of this position?
First: Rewrite the job description of truss stacker
The truss stacker, in addition to stacking, should be familiar with QC requirements. They don’t need to be as skilled as the in-house QC manager, but they do need to be able to understand basic elements of ANSI/TPI 1 Chapter 3 requirements related to the construction of a truss. They should understand the following:
- Member to member gap
- General orientation of the connector plate
- Rotation of the connector
- Missing plates
- Broken lumber
- Embedment of the connector.
Second: Teach stacking 101
The stacker needs to be trained to stack trusses uniformly as to reveal problems and issues. As I detail in my previous article, How Important are Neatly Stacked Trusses?, important points to remember include the following:
- Tight banded packs create laminated packages that strengthen the pack.
- A carefully placed nail near the overhang as each truss is stacked can aid in alignment.
- Blocking is absolutely necessary in order to prevent lateral stress on truss members.
- Like trusses should be banded together if at all possible.
- The longer the span, the more bands required.
- Truss labels that are readable in the stack are preferred to help loading verification and make truss identification by the erection contractor quick and simple.
- Neat, tight packaging with trusses aligned give the jobsite delivery a great first impression.
Third: Provide QC experience
Consider providing an opportunity for the stacker to do an occasional in-house inspection. That way, your truss stacker will be able to see why and how all of the small details matter. This experience will benefit the fabricator too by positively impacting quality throughout the plant.
Fourth: Reward finding problems
Why not provide an incentive for the stacker to find problems? Then, instead of thinking they’re causing more problems when identifying mistakes in the plant, they will understand that they are supposed to do just that! Rewarding their efforts to keep their eye on quality will improve their attentiveness and greatly benefit your overall QC.
Finally: Close the loop
Create a pathway for problems identified by the stacker to be resolved. My previous article, Is Your Plant Process an Open or Closed Loop Process?, highlights how it is essential to have feedback loops in manufacturing plants. If departments are working in isolation and information is not being shared among them, then your quality will suffer. Only with communication will you be able to actually fix the problems!
The truss stacker will never be the highest paid or most educated person in your plant, but they just might be the most important person when it comes to ensuring that your production is running properly. Ignoring truss stacker required skillsets could be a missed opportunity to improve your product and to help prevent delivering problems to your customer.
An ANSI/TPI 1 3rd Party Quality Assurance Authorized Agent covering the Southeastern United States, Glenn Traylor is an independent consultant with almost four decades of experience in the structural building components industry. Glenn serves as a trainer-evaluator-auditor covering sales, design, PM, QA, customer service, and production elements of the truss industry. He also provides project management specifically pertaining to structural building components, including on-site inspections and ANSI/TPI 1 compliance assessments. Glenn provides new plant and retrofit designs, equipment evaluations, ROI, capacity analysis, and CPM analysis.