CASE STUDIES

Automation Delivers Three Key Results   Bryan Cone, Operations Manager Industrial Wood Products  If anyone knows the challenges with meeting customer demands for remanufactured lumber, it is Industrial Wood Products. Their plants in Vicksburg, Mississippi and in...

    Sometimes you look around the industry and have a need that just doesn’t seem to be met with the standard machinery offered by the leading suppliers. And when those instances occur, you may have to go back to the drawing board to develop something new. That is...

    In the heart of red pine country in Michigan, Biewer Sawmill manufactures its line of dog-ear fence boards. "Our owner, Tim Biewer, designed this saw line specifically for fence boards. Nearly everything moves by conveyers between saws and machines," noted Jason...

    "Over the last three to four years, we've been developing a Lean Manufacturing culture focusing on finance, operations, and safety," explains Bo Reese, plant manager. "We used to run one of our saw lines with seven (7) people. Two workers were at a roundtable at...

    Managing four lines at three sawmills several hundred miles apart in Washington and Oregon is a challenging job admits Bob Armstrong, plant manager. "We run several products each shift-from kiln stick to stakes to pallet boards-and we run all our equipment hard,...

   Spend a few minutes with Michael Hensley, operations manager at Unaka Forest Products, and you know that lumber products are not just his family business, they are in his blood. His father was a logger and brought his twin sons and daughter into the family...

     Ed Healy, operations director at John Rock, Inc., of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, imagines that robotics may be a factor in the future but, for the right now, their mill produces an average of 17,000 pallets per 12 hour shift with well-planned automation for their...

    The Pallet Factory is an end-to-end lumber processing facility with pallet manufacturing operations 60 miles southeast of metro Atlanta. Prior to 2009, five employees worked at the end of saw mill production line stacking lumber. These five employees worked at a...

    Automation has been the key to weathering business cycles and continuing to grow for the last two decades at Berry Pallets in Waseca, Minnesota. Currently, Berry Pallet receives six to seven Semi truckloads of soft wood lumber each day to process on three lines,...