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Component Manufacturing dverti$er

Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the

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August 2019 #11241 Page #8

Celebrating 50 Years of Truss Design Innovation Part XIII: The Unfinished Whole House Joe Kannapell - P.E. Senior VP, MiTek USA www.mitek-us.com

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y purchasing Alpine, ITW/ Truswal strengthened their chances of outflanking MiTek/ TrusJoist in building the whole house. At the time of this acquisition in early 2006, we at MiTek had poured many millions into our efforts and had little to show for it. Now our competitor was bulking up. The economy was scaring us. But before any showdown, both of us had to overcome some serious internal conflicts. A business partnership is said to be the most contentious form of organization. How accurate that characterization proved to be. Both sides were bringing together former competitors with disparate objectives. Truswal had heavily hawked Tommy Wood’s whole house potential, while Alpine had mainly focused on their truss expertise. Yet Truswal was the incumbent at its parent company, and their Tommy Wood was a formidable figure. How would his parametric approach, which so far benefitted only a minority of truss plants, mesh with Alpine’s much more prolific truss tools. Soon this dichotomy would be put to a crucial test. We at MiTek were also at odds with our TrusJoist (T-J) partner. Our 70-member joint development team was holed up in Denver, 900 miles away from both headquarters, and seemingly a long way from producing usable software. Truss and wall design is incredibly detailed, involving hundreds of different individual pieces, while EWP design basically involves a much smaller number of beams, columns, and connections. Each partner had insufficient knowledge and not enough interest in addressing the other’s concerns. And matching our competitor’s superior wall panel functionality wasn’t even on the docket. Contentious communications and visits finally led to legal disputes. And T-J had many more lawyers than we had.

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