The Necessity of Having High-Capacity Utilization Joe Kannapell, PE Published June 29, 2026 Ed Ryan said it in the 1960s, Dick Rotto in the 1980s, and Pulte in the1990s and 2020s, but it took a PhD, Ricardo Brites, Director of Engineering of Mercer Mass Timber, to layout some good evidence that a successful manufacturing plant needs to operate at a level of at least 75% of capacity. In... Read More
How AI Will, or Won’t, Overtake the Truss Industry Joe Kannapell, PE Published January 12, 2026 My monthly column, The Last Word, focused on a very hot topic for January, “(When) Will AI Overtake the Truss Industry.” Delving further into this burning issue, I turned away from random YouTube AI sessions and went to a better source, the School of Data Science at the University of... Read More