Enhancing Production with Pre-Made Frame & Truss Components

The Power of Pre-Made Components

Fabricators who invest in pre-made components can streamline their manufacturing process, producing and invoicing more finished products. For the past 18 years, Programmed Timber Supplies (PTS) has been producing components to supplement their customers’ production. The reasons for choosing pre-made components vary from one fabricator to another, but the common denominator is always the pursuit of an advantage.

Understanding Critical and Common Components

All the pieces of timber that go into making a frame & truss can be classified as either ‘critical’ or ‘common’. In this context, a critical component is one that has been made specifically for a particular job. On the other hand, a common component is one that is frequently used across multiple jobs. For instance, a critical component could be an A truss top chord, while a common one might be a junction block.

While a plant has to cut all the critical components, it doesn’t have to cut all the common components – these can be bought in. Most plants currently use linear saws to cut their critical components and often include common components in the cut to maximize timber recovery.

The Efficiency of Buying Common Components

Cutting all the common components can lead to diminishing returns. The number of shorter common components required in any plant far exceeds what can be justified in effective economic recovery, especially when most of the expensive linear saw equipment has a limited piece number cut per shift. For example, cutting a couple of junction blocks off the end of a long board when cutting a chord makes sense. However, cutting a long length MGP10 into a number of short common components does not. It’s more efficient to use that saw to cut another critical chord and buy in the common components.

Increasing Production and Invoicing

Production (and invoicing) increases as plant capacity increases with the volume of components bought in. Increasing the buy-in leads to increased invoicing out, without the need for additional capital or other fixed costs. With trusses, only pressing capacity may be a restriction. When really successful, an additional frame line might also be required or even an additional office hand to raise the extra invoices.

All Programmed Timber Supplies customers do well as they are networking their own production. Each plant can have their own specification for common components for Programmed Timber Supplies to manufacture.

Our Range of Common Components

We manufacture a wide range of common components in both untreated and H2F (Blue), including:

• Floor Truss Webs
• Floor Truss Verticals
• Floor Truss End Blocking – all types
• Junction Blocks
• Junction Blocks Undersized
• Nogs
• Nogs Undersized
• Wall Studs
• Trimmers (bundled or unbundled)
• Creeper Chords Top
• Creeper Chords Bottom
• Jack Truss Chords
• Truss Web Blanks
• Turb -O-Webs
• Z Sprockets
• Valley Batten
• Valley Board