Thought Leadership

Forest Products, Production Efficiency, Thought Leadership

July 29, 2024

Reflections from 37+ years of Resource Procurement and Management

I have always loved sport analogies to drive alignment around business strategies. In my 37 years in this amazing industry, I’ve seen that the use of a relevant sports analogy can be critical to...

Forest Products, Thought Leadership

July 17, 2024

What Is Your Mill’s Most Profitable Log?

The answer to this key question is often not known by mill staff or log procurement managers. Generally, rules of thumb like ‘try to stay above an 8” top’ or ‘we don’t compete with...

Maintenance, Management Systems, Production Efficiency, Thought Leadership

July 16, 2024

The Art of Managing Downtime

Over the years I’ve had the tremendous opportunity to have worked in many manufacturing environments in multiple industries, across 19 different countries. While each manufacturing operation has nuance, they are universally focused on minimizing...

Forest Products, Management Systems, Thought Leadership

August 17, 2020

Is it the Carpenter, or is it the Tools?

At the conclusion of a recent Value & Recovery Assessment of a large SYP lumber operation, the General Manager was reflecting on issues that we’d identified around drying quality. His mill runs multiple continuous...

Forest Products, Thought Leadership

November 2, 2018

Shhhhh! The Secret To Improving Lumber Recovery Is…

As everyone in the lumber business knows, RECOVERY is a very big deal. For purposes of this article, I’m loosely defining Recovery as the amount of saleable lumber that you are able to extract...

Forest Products, Thought Leadership

October 3, 2018

Is Your Ladder On The Right Tree?

To a passer-by, a ladder leaning against a tree conveys a message. It tells the world that the owner of the ladder has determined that among all the trees in the forest, he has...

Forest Products, Thought Leadership

September 11, 2018

Does Your Optimization Strategy Align With Your Purpose

In my many years of working with clients in the lumber business, there is always one question I like to pose…and the many answers that I’ve been given are reflective of the gap that...

Forest Products, Thought Leadership

August 20, 2018

Would your Optimizer call you “Predictable”?

Over the years lumber companies have wisely invested heavily in optimization as a way to remove human error and influence from log/cant/board breakdown decisions. This technology, so the sales pitch goes, allows a computer...

Forest Products, Thought Leadership

July 18, 2018

T-Bones or 2x4s?

When you talk to most people about manufacturing, they get an image in their head of a process that resembles a car, or an iPhone, assembly plant. Hundreds or thousands of parts are either...