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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
December 2020 #12257 Page #44
A Renewed Focus for 2021 The importance of making changes for Offsite Manufacturing
or some it seems like this past year, 2020, has been either a waste or was put on pause. There have been numerous challenges in our businesses, politics, the economy, our homes, and many more all disrupted by the Covid pandemic that has affected the US and the world’s economy. Would you ever have thought entire businesses would be shut down and the population told to isolate in their homes?
By Ben Hershey Solutions Provider & CEO 4Ward Solutions Group
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I talked last month about management drift and how this past year has been a challenge for managers in keeping their teams focused. Along the way, there have been companies who have simply lost focus on their goals, or the changes taking place in offsite manufacturing. Offsite Manufacturing – yes, there is a lot of press about it and there are even people who keep trying to change the name of this process in an attempt to influence it, such as calling it “industrialized manufacturing” instead. What the name misses are the many methods for providing an offsite solution to the field. Truss components have been around for a long time, but just supplying a component to the field is not going to solve the issues we have today in construction. Panelized walls have also been around for a long time – when I was young and learning everything in the plant in the 1970s, panels were being used in our Chicago market. But panels alone, again, do not address the trend and issues in the field. It is no secret to anyone reading this that labor has been a problem – in the lumber yard, component plant, millwork operation, field framing, building design, etc. But most of all, the problem has been the lack of skilled labor in the field trades. Because of this, we have quality issues, loss of cycle time, etc. in the field, which adds up to higher costs for building a structure. It is this labor shortage and the need to increase the speed at which we deliver a structure that is driving Offsite/ Industrialized manufacturing. Our need as an industry, lumber dealer, building material distributor, component manufacturer, or modular manufacturer requires us to constantly look at the ways in which prefabricated building components are used.
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