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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
July 2018 #10228 Page #22
Adverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Estimating Truss Labor Using Board Footage Versus Proper Man-Minute Time Standards Copyrights © 2018 Todd Drummond Consulting LLC.
There is too much emotional investment in a unit measurement method long-understood to be imperfect, when there is an alternative that simply works Todd Drummond
or many years, I have been beating the drum that board footage (BF) is an imperfect unit measurement that our industry should abandon. The better alternative is the proven method of time estimations which uses man-minutes (MM). Man-minutes are derived from time-in-motion practices that have been proven to work by industrial engineers. In fact, most of the resistance to this superior practice stems from emotional investment in the old system rather than simple logical understanding.
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Every production supervisor knows that when a larger chord member order—such as an attic or agriculture trusses—is being processed on the tables, the BF count goes sky-high compared to common trusses. The elevated BF numbers have nothing to do with effort or efficiencies within the manufacturing; only the type of units being measured. This imperfection is laid bare every time, and yet we as an industry still cling to this imperfect unit of measure system because of historical practices, upper management insistence, truss software that “We cannot solve our problems with displays the BF, and lack of skill to properly develop MM using industrial the same thinking we used when we engineering practices. created them.”
Albert Einstein
The Emotional Involvement Shown with a True Story Three people were sitting in the back seats of a minivan during a trade show: myself, a salesman from a plate vendor, and a prominent CEO of a large company that both the salesperson and I hoped to influence. I was seated next to the CEO, and the salesman was behind us. I discussed MM with the CEO and talked about how they are more effective than BF for pricing and manufacturing efficiency benchmarks, which is exactly what the industrial engineer John Houlihan did many years ago, except he referred to them as realistic expectancy (RE) or scheduled units (SU) instead of MM. As I told the CEO about my proven ideas, he became pleasantly animated and asked questions because he was very interested in this new-to-him idea. While this conversation took place, I could see the salesman behind us getting physically agitated; his face turned red and he started to shake. I did my best Continued next page
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