A
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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$er
December 2019 #11245 Page #8
Sixty Years of Machines: Introduction
W
hen do CMs go after new technology? Primarily when they’ve had several Joe Kannapell - P.E. good years under their belt. But once new equipment has proven to be Senior VP, MiTek USA much better than what it replaces, it continues to sell even in slower www.mitek-us.com economies. This is illustrated by the apparent inflection point midway through the last sixty years (see chart). From 1984 until 1991, equipment sales had sunk to new lows, but then gained momentum during the 17-year surge that followed. A similar run up is occurring now, 8 years into the current housing expansion. Labor shortages, complex roof designs, and technological advancements accelerate adoption. Manual saws are replaced with computerized versions which basically perform the same task, only much faster. Contrarily, assembly equipment is changing much more radically. Truss plants overwhelmingly are converting to roller gantry systems, with many of these incorporating automated setup. In retrospect, it seems obvious that we would replace manual saws with computerized versions, and vertical presses with roller gantries. But why was our industry so slow on the uptake? Is this the reason we haven’t robot-i-sized by now? Actually, our machinery evolved slowly for reasons that are worth exploring, to better understand what’s ahead.
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