Panelists: Greg Dahlstrom, Villaume IndustriesJared Dix, Apex TrussDale Nord, Huskey Truss & Building Supply

Moderator: Chris Cozart, Builders FirstSource

Program handouts sponsored by:

BCMC

Operation IT: The Power of a Business/Tech Partnership

Cozart says positive change starts with creating the right team, a task in which IT managers play a critical role. “Those stuck in the middle (but in a good way!),” he said, are perfectly positioned to hear from both exec-utives and end users, and to bring IT staff “the wisdom of both.” A good leader assembles a team that can productively work together to carry out a number of crucial tasks:

• Determine what you need. It’s a group effort. Operational leadership can tell you where the company is headed. IT staff can tell you how to get there, whether that’s fixing current issues, building the infrastruc-ture for future upgrades, or ensuring program integration. End users, through process repetition and exposure, can tell you whether there are alternative ways to achieve operational goals others haven’t considered. Everyone’s input is needed to build employee buy-in throughout the company and to successfully implement change.

• Determine what you don’t need. Not every new piece of technolo-gy or new version of a software program is worth the potential dis-ruption. Cozart gives the example of a new version of truss design software that fixes an issue with California hip trusses. If you design those all the time, upgrade as soon as you can. If your market doesn’t use California hips, don’t rush to get the latest thing—wait for the next upgrade. Either way, keep your software vendor in the loop. “Let them know whether that version is something you need,” Cozart urged. If it’s not meeting your needs, let them know what will and rely on the group you put together for that information. Your group should validate every change you make as well as plan future changes; they are the ones who can help ensure you’re consistently getting a reasonable return in operational gains for the investment you make in IT development and deployment effort.

“TECHNOLOGY IS GOING TO BE the way to increase efficiencies,” Chris Cozart predicts. “A hammer isn’t going to get any faster.”

Realizing the efficiencies technology can provide—and the productivity increases and bottom-line benefits that follow—depends on the constant evolution of technolo-gy. Staying on top of software upgrades and advancements in hardware has several advantages, not the least of which is allow-ing employees to work efficiently: they’re not waiting for bug fixes or badly-needed upgrades. They might even grumble less at altered processes when the changes are incremental.

As director of manufacturing systems, Cozart spends a lot of time thinking about ways to make this vision a reality at the many Builders FirstSource locations. For him, high-tech success comes down to put-ting sufficient time and effort into a critical, low-tech process: communication.

“IT people have a tendency to lose focus of who their customers are,” Cozart said. The users—the consumers of the hardware and software the IT department deploys—have insight that’s vital to successful change. “If you just have that communication,” Cozart explained, “you will be able to understand what’s working and what’s not working.”

It takes good communi-cation to keep an ongo-ing upgrade process on track.

Making a Case forContinuous Change

Chris Cozart, director of manufacturing systems for Builders FirstSource in Denver, Colorado, believes everyone’s input is needed to build employee buy-in throughout the company and to successfully implement change.

Don’t over-do it. “What I see the IT people pursuing is trying

to stay on [the most] updated version. A lot of times, it’s not as necessary as the software vendor or the IT people think it is.”

Don’t leave anyone out.

“What are the leaders of our company asking of users? Are users doing something different— something managers don’t know about— that’s working better?”

Don’t do what you can, do what’s right.

“If it doesn’t do what the users need it to do, it doesn’t matter how fast it is.”

Don’t chase the perfect version— it doesn’t exist.

“Once we got it deployed, it didn’t really do anything that we needed it to do. It was just a new version.”

• Create change. “Changes need to happen to accommo-date internal growth,” argued Cozart, and he says it’s crit-ical that end users carry that message. When a change cycle gets out of control, Cozart observed, it “isn’t what’s happening at the top.” Executives might have a great plan, but giving users the chance to validate the direction of any IT project is still critical, Cozart said. “Users need to stay engaged from the beginning,” said Cozart. When that happens, users are more accepting of the end result “because they’ve had a part—they’ve had a voice—in the process.” Ideally, Cozart said, “everybody’s involved, and everybody’s satisfied with the outcome.”

The near future, Cozart anticipates, will see the component manufacturing industry working to “minimize mouse clicks, minimize foot traffic, go paperless, and use technology out on the shop floor.” All of those initiatives will depend on “educating the folks that are already there,” Cozart said,

EVALUATE

PLAN

DEPLOY

VALIDATE

TEST

and making sure they have a positive mind-set when it comes to changes in the tech-nology they’re using.

The key to fostering that attitude, Cozart said, is communica-tion. “Make sure they

understand why you’re changing,” and make sure “they” includes everyone—executives, managers, IT staff and end users. That might mean explaining the benefits of stan-dardization—Cozart emphasizes that routine upgrades to keep users on a single version of software can improve the IT department’s ability to support users and provide docu-mentation and training. It might mean reminding users that coordinated updates can improve system compatibility, making global collaboration easier.

Whatever it takes, Cozart said, “make sure everyone stays involved with the process and understands what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.” There will be challenges. “The first one is difficult,” Cozart admitted. The first upgrade cycle, the first improvement project, the first meeting of your change management group—all of them have their potential pitfalls. However, a rocky start isn’t the end. “It becomes a rinse-and-repeat,” Cozart said, “you set a kind of cadence.” That cadence gives users consistent and realistic expectations, minimizes the effort needed for each upgrade process, and gives users the sense of ownership that makes them your company’s best champions of change.

Giving users the chance to validate the direction of any IT project is critical.

A good leader assembles a team. Everyone’s input is needed to build buy-in.

JOHN HOLLAND KNOWS that Clearspan Components is unique. “Most truss plants don’t have someone who is an IT professional,” acknowledged Holland. “Most places have that one guy who was asked to fix it that one time and now he’s in charge of it.”

As a member of the very small community of professional IT staff in the component manufacturing industry, Holland is eager to share the best practices he’s identified.

“No one has an expansive knowledge of all software and all things,” Holland said. The IT staff he knows are often “going to do the exact same thing as any other user” when faced with an IT problem: “we’re going to go Google it.”

That basic, commonsense approach is the heart of his advice on technology issue management and documen-tation. Whatever you do to communicate and track prob-lems, he said, “make it a process that’s simple enough that you’ll actually do it, and detailed enough that it’s useful.”

Simple is key, although that can be less intuitive than you might anticipate. For example, take the first rule Holland sets with his IT staff: “You can’t ask me. You have to write it down.” Why document every issue when walking over to Holland’s office is easier? He explains it this way: say someone explains the problem to Holland, only to have him point to a third colleague who might know the answer. Now the problem has to be explained again—everyone’s time has been spent, and no one is closer to a solution. Writing down the issue, Holland insists, simplifies the pro-cess and saves time in the long run.

Tips for Better

“Communicate well, with everyone, including your future self.”

What’s the secret to great IT support in the component industry?

“The benefit is twofold,” said Holland. First, the question can be asked once—only once—no matter how many people need to be involved to find a solution. Second, there’s transparency. Everyone (including those who might encounter the issue in the future) can see that the question has been asked and can see what the answer is when both are written down.

And that leads to Holland’s second recommendation: once a problem is written down, keep it somewhere useful. “The most effective thing we’ve done,” he said, “is post issues on the internet.” Again, there are many benefits to this process.

For example, someone outside your company might have the solution. Holland explained that most of the software he’s asked to troubleshoot isn’t unique to the compo-nent manufacturing industry—think Windows or Excel, for example. “Usually there’s someone else in some other industry” facing the same problems, said Holland. In some cases, he sees a problem and knows right away: “We won’t get around to fixing this, but someone else might.”

In addition, posting issues and answers online makes them easy to reference. “Google will index this,” Holland explained. When anyone searches for an issue that he has posted, it will appear in search results along with similar issues. If no one has offered a solution to Holland’s post, or if that solution doesn’t work for the user looking up his post, similar issues and additional solutions are just a click away. Better still, some might even comment on or edit a post to provide additional or updated information, giving everyone easy access to the current answer to the problem.

Find a process that’s simple enough that you’ll

actually do it, and detailed enough that it’s useful.

The common-sense basis of the online posting approach is that it makes good use of what’s already there. Time poured into custom, home-grown software or an evaluation of each new task-management or documentation tool that comes to the market is time that could be spent resolving issues.

There’s also the other extreme to watch for: using what you know even if it doesn’t result in simple, searchable, accurate and up-to-date documentation. Holland’s example is email: everyone’s comfortable with it, and it’s searchable, but an email chain from a year ago about an issue that’s similar to, but not quite the same as, the issue you have now isn’t as helpful as having your issue properly documented, tracked and updated in an appropriate system.

In the end, Holland’s secret to good IT support is really good communication. “The people who are the best at communicating will be perceived as being best at IT,” he said. It doesn’t always come down to who in the plant has the particular skills to solve a technology problem. Instead, it often turns out that users running into problems “feel they were best supported by the IT staff who communicat-ed with them best.”

So if you work at a company where, instead of looking to hire a full-time IT professional, you’re trying to identify the person who fixed something once and can now take the lead in providing technology support, make sure you have the right skill set in mind. “The number one skill,” said Holland, “is being able to communicate well.”

And if you have the people and are now looking for the best system to manage your issues and solutions, Holland’s advice is to keep good records and be patient. “We have been doing this for a couple of years now,” he said, and he’s found that it’s hard to recognize an effective system until it’s been in place for a while.

Fortunately, an ineffective process is much easier to spot. “You know your documentation system isn’t working when someone says, ‘I’ve seen this problem before, but I don’t know what we did about it.’ That’s how you know you’re making a mistake.” Every penny and minute spent solving the problem after that point is the price of not having a good documentation and communication system in place. It’s likely a high price. “If we solved this problem before, we obviously spent time and money to get that done,” Holland explained. “Why pay for that again?”

Recording all the steps of the problem and its solution, in a place where everyone can find them, increases the likeli-hood that you won’t have to go through the problem-solv-ing process a second time. And, of course, downtime itself is very expensive, so you want to be sure your tech support team is free to solve the most pressing problems.

Holland has heard the questions that many component manufacturers have: Is it worth the time and effort that it takes to get everyone in the plant to document issues thoroughly? Will saving time solving tomorrow’s issue jus-tify the process of documenting today’s issue? Is thorough documentation of IT issues cost effective in the long run? Holland’s answer, for the record, is yes.

SIMPLE. If it’s not easy, you won’t do it.

SEARCHABLE.

If you can’t find it, it doesn’t help.

ACCURATE. Incomplete information doesn’t lead to a solution.

UP-TO-DATE.

Old solutions are just as useless as no solutions.

“In our plant and others, tech-nology is the lowest-hang-ing fruit at this point. We’ve stretched our manufacturing dollars as much as we can.

We’ve gotten about as efficient as we’re going to get,” in terms of material use and shipping efficiency, says Holland.

What to focus on going forward, Holland predicts, are things like source control: that is, managing the changes that multiple users make to a single collection of informa-

John Holland, head of soft-ware engineering at Clearspan Components in Meridian, Mississippi

tion. Take a design file, for example. “One person working on it is making changes, but what happens if somebody needs access or a customer requests an updated version?” he asks. “We’ve spent very little time making that a smooth and well-structured process.”

The process of “making sure one person’s changes don’t stomp on somebody else’s” is a big challenge for the indus-try, says Holland. That’s where more and more dollars and effort will go in the next few years. And not all of those resources will come from the IT department.

“Some solutions to those processes are technological solu-tions,” he says, “but some won’t be. More than anything, they will be communication problems.” That means every-one will have some responsibility to reach out, speak up and share knowledge to find a way forward.

There are many documentation tools in use at Clearspan, and Holland has a few favorites he recommends. The tool itself though, he emphasizes, is much less important than the informa-tion you capture. “People aren’t very good at recognizing what they should write down,” he says. A user who’s not technically minded presses a button and reports an unexpected result, while a tech-savvy problem solver needs to know what settings were in place and what else was happening when the button was pressed.

“Screen capture recordings are what I point people toward if they’re struggling to get this right,” says Holland, adding that implementing such a tool is easier than it might sound and defi-nitely worth the effort.

“Most people are skeptical that you can train users to do this,” Holland adds, but there are plenty of easy-to-use programs out there. Teaching employees to use the tools is far easier than re-hiring a workforce with extensive technology troubleshooting skills. A few minutes spent demoing a screen capture program lets everyone—managers, designers, production crews, IT staff—do what they do best, because it solves the communication problem.

“People will watch a 30-second video when they won’t read a block of text,” Holland argues. Plus, a video means that the user reporting the problem “can’t not include all the details.” In an email or even a conversation, “the issue isn’t perfectly translat-ed from the person who’s having the problem to the person who’s fixing the problem.” A video showing what’s happening conveys all the information.

For Holland, screen recordings have become a good way to pre-empt problems. “My guys now—when they’re about to do something critical or setting up a machine or something—I have them start the screen recorder when they start working.” If anything goes wrong, it’s easy to go back and figure out what and why—or to provide all the information someone else might need to suggest a solution.

TOOL TIPSShareX + YouTube (accurate)User-friendly screen recording soft-ware on an online platform makes it easy to create and find videos that capture all the details of an issue.

Trello (searchable)Social task management programs make it easy to ask questions and find answers.

StackExchange (up-to-date)Online forums provide access to expertise outside your company and industry.

WHAT’S AROUND THE CORNER FOR TRUSS IT?

and reminding your team members to watch for suspicious emails is an important part of protecting your network.

3. DON’T STOP.After gathering the low-hanging fruit like anti-virus soft-ware and network file access rights, there is still more work to be done. Tying systems together with a unified threat management tool, for example, can provide great security while also offering an easy way to manage the backend of your network. As more devices are introduced into your network, more possibilities for a hole in your security walls are introduced as well. Making sure that all devices are running the latest operating system and software patches, as well as maintaining proper administrative access, is a crucial, ongoing process.

With an ever-increasing amount of computer-controlled machinery in component plants, it is important to work with hardware and software vendors to ensure all the comput-ers and digital devices accessing your network are secure. As more and more employees work remotely, making sure you have the ability to protect end users on their laptops, home computers, and cellphones is critical to your ongoing success as a business. Whether you’re planning your next company training on digital security or simply reviewing your existing processes, be sure you are taking into account all the ways your staff interacts with your network.

Greg Dahlstrom, IT/IS Manager of Villaume Industries in St. Paul, Minnesota, chairs SBCA’s IT committee. If you are interested in getting involved in the IT committee, email editor@sbcmag.info.

COMPUTER HACKERS do not target only large, Fortune 500 companies. In fact, criminals have begun to target small businesses, specifically because they rarely have the resources to fully protect themselves. Good cybersecurity provides defense through depth: layer upon layer of pro-tection that can stop threats even when a single layer fails. However, even if you don’t have the resources to configure and maintain many layers of cybersecurity, there are a few basic steps you can take to protect your operation.

1. DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING.The most important step in creating a more secure environ-ment is to start doing something. Pick anything, from docu-menting a company-wide password policy to reviewing your software and hardware settings. Just beginning the process will give you numerous ideas for security improvements.

Taking this first simple step will help you better understand your current level of security and where you need to go next.

2. GET EVERYONE ON BOARD.Just like workplace safety, digital safety is a goal that all employees need to be thinking about as they do their jobs. Managers and office personnel are obvious targets for a cybersecurity breach, but in many component plants, you cannot find a single employee who does not use a comput-er at some point in the day!

While network firewalls and anti-virus software are import-ant, end-user training is the most critical tool available to fight computer threats. Understanding attack types like ransomware (a virus that encrypts your network’s data) and phishing (a method of spoofing an email in order to steal sensitive information) can help you identify threats. When a user has the knowledge to spot something phishy, the chance of preventing a breach is much higher. Teaching

DigitalSAFETY

Effective cybersecurity requires a team effort.

run the saw software or a tablet for production crews to use for time log-ging—needs to be capable of holding up in the unique environmental con-ditions of your plant. “When you just buy something off the shelf, it’s not necessarily an appliance that’s going to be hardened for our environments. You’re going to spend more money replacing it down the road when your environmental conditions overwhelm your equipment.”

SPENDING A LITTLE CAN SAVE A LOTHikel walked through an example of how a true industrial appliance—instead of the cheapest computer available—is a cost-saver in the long run. “Everybody thinks that, ‘it’s a $600 computer, so when it fails, I’ll replace it,’” he said, but that logic only goes so far. “It’s always going to fail at the least convenient time,” Hikel pointed out. “When it fails, then you’re going to experience downtime,

“EVERYBODY FOCUSES ON soft-ware and software development, but there’s another side,” said Jason Hikel of Shelter Systems Limited. As head of Shelter’s information systems team, Hikel is adamant that there are “always gains to be had by using appropriate appliances in a manufac-turing environment.”

Hikel knows the appropriate appli-ance doesn’t necessarily come cheap, but he says the investment is worth it. “Maybe in the short term it’s more expensive to buy an industrial device,” he conceded, but he argues that, over the lifetime of a piece of equipment, good, long-lasting hardware will save a company money by minimizing the costs of replacement, downtime or data recovery.

“As manufacturers in wood,” Hikel explained, “we have some very spe-cific environmental issues that we need to deal with and think about.” Any piece of hardware you bring into the plant—whether it’s a computer to

and you’re going to lose money. If you can mitigate those risks by using an industrial piece of equipment or by having a backup piece of equipment, then you’re ahead of the game.”

Having a backup computer ready to go might sound like overkill, but Hikel contends that it makes a lot of sense. “It’s cheap insurance. Even if it’s that $600 Dell desktop,” he said, “in the grand scheme of things, that’s not all that difficult to obtain and have in case of a disaster situation.” Planning for hardware failure is like planning for

Minimizing wear and tear on your technology hardware is a significant step toward avoiding down-time and recovering quickly when problems occur.

How much tech expertise do you need in the component industry?

It behooves anybody who’s got a manufacturing environ-ment to understand a little about industrial computing as a whole and using modern technology like virtualization and industrial hardware to self-insure or avoid exor-bitant costs for computing hardware that’s not appro-priate for the manufacturing environment.

maintenance on any other piece of in-plant machinery. You certainly have other $600 and pricier spare parts in stock.

Industrial computers and an investment in virtualization are worth the effort, Hikel insists. “Both those pieces of tech-nology can help you mitigate how much money you lose when a piece of equipment goes down.” In fact, both are central to what he thinks the component manufacturing industry as a whole should be pushing for: more technol-ogy adoption and more innovation when it comes to tech in the plant.

A HIGH-TECH PLANT WITH HARDWARE OUTSIDE“I hope we’ll see more automation, more automated equip-ment, a greater use of technology to solve the problems of manufacturing,” Hikel said. He predicts more “fully” auto-mated truss lines in big plants over the next few years, the kind of equipment “where you’re able to, with three people, do the same work that we’re doing with 15 right now.” As lumber prices rise and as both lumber and labor become scarcer, Hikel sees more automation as inevitable.

As that happens, Hikel is also waiting for more simple changes—namely, the ability “to apply pretty standard technological concepts to the manufacturing of trusses.” At Shelter, he said, “we’re asking our vendors constantly what their thoughts are, what their plans are, for virtualizing their computing equipment, especially as it’s linked to their man-ufacturing equipment.”

Hikel is committed to using thin clients—input-output devic-es like bare-bones computers or tablets that accept mouse and keyboard commands, display information, but don’t do significant processing—wherever possible. Time-logging or job-tracking programs, for example, can run on cheap devic-es that are easy to protect in a plant, while saw and laser software can rely on servers that are stored more safely. “I have desktops that I put in a box and out of the way of the forklifts,” Hikel explains. “I connect to them with a thin client so if something goes down, it’s the thin client that breaks

Is more technology the future of the component industry?

I think at some point there’s going to be a massive disruption in how we’re doing things. Somebody’s going to come up with some kind of revolutionary concept that’s going to push the building industry forward. That’s going to come from some outside, disruptive Silicon Valley-type force.

and not the computers, which have specific drivers and software running on them.”

BUILDING A BACK-UP PLANHikel’s point is that there are strategies out there that can improve how technology is used in the plant. There are “things that manufacturers all over the country—all over the world!—use, but they just haven’t trickled down into our industry as much as they should,” he said. “Minimizing your downtime and self-insuring by using modern comput-ing methods and technology” is already possible, he argues; executives just need to bring vendors on board.

Every plant manager “should be pushing for more virtual-ization,” Hikel advised. “From a software and a hardware perspective, that is something that everybody should be doing these days just because it’s so much easier to recov-er from a disaster situation than in a desktop environment.”

Regardless of the direction those conversations take, no component manufacturing operation has to take on its IT challenges alone. “There’s plenty of IT workers out there who would have a field day in our industry creating new things,” Hikel said, “but we don’t really go out and seek that often.” A limited budget for expanding your staff doesn’t need to be a barrier, he added. “If you don’t have an internal IT team, partner with somebody in your area who understands technology and is interested in man-ufacturing technology. Find somebody you can partner with instead of carrying the entire cost of supporting an internal department.”

Of course, if you have the people in place, Hikel’s advice is even simpler: “If you’re a manager that has an IT depart-

ment, certainly go and listen to them sometimes.”

Jason Hikel

How do you engage ven-dors in conversations about in-plant tech?

I ask my vendors, where’s the innovation coming from on the software side? I say: you want us to make this investment; we want software that can work in a virtualized environment.

PROTECT YOUR TECHTechnology is everywhere in component man-ufacturing plants. “Even the simplest saws have servo stops and servo angles for the blades,” noted Hikel. Particularly when you’re on a tight budget, it’s wise to invest in protect-ing the tech you have. “Several hundred dollars can extend the life of your computing equip-ment, which in turn can extend the life of the manufacturing equipment,” Hikel explained. “It’s really just about using modern methods to overcome the environmental issues that we run across as truss manufacturers.”

• Surge protection and power are conditioning readily available. Use them, and make sure everything is properly grounded.

• An enclosure for your hardware can create positive air pressure that prevents airborne particles from entering the equipment. Use compressed air to keep the enclosure, and the equipment in it, cool in all weather.

• Minimize moving parts and the number of devices you use. No matter how good your housekeeping program is, sawdust will get into your technology. The fewer items you have to clean, maintain and repair, the easier it’ll be to keep up.

The articles in this handout origi-

nally appeared in the March, May,

August, and September 2017 issues

of SBC Magazine. Read more and

subscribe at sbcmag.info.

Do you have an IT story or tip to

share? Email editor@sbcmag.info.

March 2017

SBC Magazine • 6300 Enterprise Lane • Suite 200 • Madison, WI 53719PRSRT STDU.S. Postage

PAIDMadison, WI

Permit No. 2223

Big Picture,Small SpacesInside this Issue: IT Upgrades | PTW Design | Cross-Team Talks | Technical Talent

Teton Truss Steps into the Tiny House Market May 2017

SBC Magazine • 6300 Enterprise Lane • Suite 200 • Madison, WI 53719PRSRT STDU.S. Postage

PAIDMadison, WI

Permit No. 2223

Inside this Issue: OSHA Updates | Technical Best Practices | Inspector Tour

Above & Beyond

August 2017

SBC Magazine • 6300 Enterprise Lane • Suite 200 • Madison, WI 53719PRSRT STDU.S. Postage

PAIDMadison, WI

Permit No. 2223

Inside this Issue: Cybersecurity | Safety Strategies | Ponding | OSHA Updates

Learning Experience

Sept/Oct 2017

SBC Magazine • 6300 Enterprise Lane • Suite 200 • Madison, WI 53719PRSRT STDU.S. Postage

PAIDMadison, WI

Permit No. 2223

Inside this Issue: Machine Guarding | In-Plant Tech | 2017 BCMC Show Guide

You Just Have to See It to Believe It

SBCA-IT Slack channel: bcmcshow.com/slack session evaluations: bcmcshow.com/sessions

Notes:

LESS LEARNING CURVE,

MORE LEARNING.

CO

PY

RIG

HT

© 2

01

7 M

ITE

K IN

DU

ST

RIE

S, IN

C. A

LL

RIG

HT

S R

ES

ER

VE

D

A C C E S S M O R E T H A N 5 0 F R E E O N L I N E C O U R S E S A N D M O R E T H A N 1 , 0 0 0 T E C H N I C A L H E L P V I D E O S

The FREE self-paced tutorials and software suppor t videos available through our online learning platform give your team — and your company — a valuable edge when working with SAPPHIRE® software and MiTek® machiner y.

> Easy-to-use online format available 24/7/365

> Software, machiner y, and engineering suppor t

> 50+ courses for structural modeling truss and panel design

> 1,000+ SAPPHIRE how-to videos

> More than 7,000 users of all experience levels have benefited

Increase your competitive advantage and improve your bottom line.Enroll your team at MiTek-US.com/Resources.