Multiple Designers Working on the Same Job?

One often-heard idea for making design software more efficient is the idea of allowing more than one person to work on a design (a layout) at the same time. The argument goes like this: I have truss people, I have EWP people, and I have panel people. I have each one do a layout, because I don’t have time for them each work on the layout in turn, each doing their own specialty. I have to turn around the (quote/order) quickly. So each person does their own thing.

We don’t want this:

So we do this:

The (quote/order) is done when the last guy gets done with his part. The inefficiency is pretty obvious, the plan needs to be interpreted three times. The layout is drawn three times. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could all collaborate on a single model?

Now it’s time to confess that I’m a skeptic of this idea. Maybe it can be done, and we’ll all be using software that can do this in the future. But I see this problem: Does each person start in a corner, start putting in walls, and we meet in the center? If so, aren’t we all still hovering over our own copy of the blueprint, figuring it out? If not, and one person does the walls, what do the other people do while that is being done?

Now once the walls and planes are in, I can see it being a nice thing to have (say) three people all working on their own areas of the layout. It might be a little distracting to see trusses popping in while you are doing the walls, but on the other hand you would get to see them right away and take them into account when doing your walls. But – here’s a catch. You put in your walls with critical studs where you see the hip girder resting. Five minutes later, you look, and the girder’s not there anymore. The truss guy decided to make it an 8’ setback instead of a 6’ setback. Unless you are communicating, you could have a real problem there (as we do now, doing our own layouts.)

So let’s put the designers in the same room and really collaborate. That makes sense, although more than half of our workspaces are designed to allow us to work in splendid isolation, not as part of a collaborative team. So if we could co-locate (work in the same room on the same thing at the same time) and have collaboration software (which we don’t now) we could probably get through the work in the shortest possible time. Even so, we are still paying three people and we are still requiring three minds get wrapped around the plans.

The alternative?

Train people to do the whole thing. Let’s put it this way, if it takes this one guy three days to do this job and it took the group above two days, then you saved a day, but it cost you twice as much (1 guy times days vs. 3 guys times 2 days.) That’s 100% more design cost. Add to that the fact that when a single designer is involved, there is zero possibility that problems like “Designer A didn’t know that Designer B put a beam in there” will occur. Seems like the better plan to me.

Rating System for Jobs

I’ve been thinking about board feet lately. Board feet is used in our industry as the primary “how much” value of something. “How much did we produce today? How big is that job? It is also sometimes used as a measure of work. “What’s our capacity?” is a question that can be answered in board feet. Board foot really doesn’t tell me much, other than how big a pile of wood it is going to take to build the job. I’ve been thinking about a different way to create a ‘scorecard’ for a job. Something that would tell me at a glance some important details about the job so I could compare it to other jobs and develop norms over weeks and months. Here are some of the things I would like these numbers to tell me:

1. How complicated is the job?

2. How heavy was the material used?

We are going to look some numbers that might shed some light on how one job is different from another - quickly.

Are we going to spend a lot of time setting up, or building trusses? Let’s calculate the number of trusses per setup, by taking the total number of trusses and dividing by the number of “marks” (unique trusses.) I suggest leaving jacks and valleys out of this calculation.

Are these simple trusses, or chopped up monsters? Again, taking the jacks and valleys out, figure the average number of pieces per truss (total pieces for all trusses divided by total number of trusses.)

Are these trusses ‘light weights,’ or are the table guys going to have to do some heavy lifting? Take the total BF and divide by the total LF of boards to create a ‘Weight Score.’

We need to collect data (using MBA or another tabulation program) to see how our jobs score in each of these areas: Trusses per Setup, Pieces per Truss, Weight. Once we have 100 or 200 jobs to refer to, we can compare and begin to assign grades. Rather than using letter grades, I suggest using numbers. Once you have 100 or more data points, figure out what the range is for each metric. For example, you may have jobs that whose Trusses per Setup range from 25 to 2. You will likely see some trends. Try to find the natural breaks within the data. You will end up with a Score for Trusses per Setup that looks something like this:

Example: Scoring System for Jobs – Trusses per Setup

Score Range

1 Over 7

2 4.5 to 7

3 3.8 to 4.5

4 3.1 to 3.8

5 less than 3.1

You want a system that will put your ‘average’ for the factor in the ‘3’ category. Do the same with the other factors we have discussed: pieces per truss and weight. Now you have three measures and a simple scoring system to quickly tell you a lot about the job. You still can use board feet to tell you the size of the job. The scoring system can help you price jobs, estimate the labor needed and see which factor affects labor rates the most. Do you make more on ‘high score’ jobs, or ‘low score’ jobs? If your MH/BF varies a great deal from job to job, perhaps a scoring system like this can help you learn why.

Order in the World of Machinery Files

Although the component manufacturing machinery world is rather quiet at the moment, it wasn’t too long ago that new pieces of computer-driven equipment, from a variety of suppliers, were coming into the marketplace at a rapid pace. Each piece of equipment seemed to have its own file format to drive it, and this presented a problem for both the equipment maker and the design/production software provider (like MiTek or ITW.)

For the guy making the equipment, the choice was either to create their own file format to drive the equipment or piggyback on to someone else’s file format and use it. Because programmers usually prefer creating their own tools, MiTek, Alpine, Virtek, Hundegger, and Koskovich all created different saw file formats. The problem then became supporting all those formats. No two are the same, and they could potentially change without notice. The cost of supporting each new file format was borne by plate manufacturers. A very inefficient system!

Having so many formats and depending on other companies to “get them right” really didn’t benefit anyone. Saw manufacturers found that the cause of bugs or inconsistencies was hard to pin down, and cost everyone time figuring out, “Is it the machine or the output from the design software?” Needless to say, this was also a big pain the people that owned the equipment! Saw makers also found they had to support formats other than their own to gain acceptance. Hundegger had their own format, but programmed their saws to read different saw file types in order to make their products more marketable.

Once established, file formats could become a straightjacket. Koskovich, for example created a simple file format years ago and all the plate suppliers supported it. This file format is simple and clever, but is incapable to such simple expansions as “three cuts on one end,” bevels, and detailed, user-specified piece orientation. Eventually it had to be abandoned. Although programmers might like the control of having their own file format, their companies had marketing issues when attempting to sell a saw whose format initially no one supported.

Around 2005, MiTek and Koskovich began discussing the possibility of a single file for the entire industry. The problem: no file format currently available was suitable. The solution began with the introduction of the Hundegger file format that supported the extra milling tools offered by that saw. Since Hundegger needed to be able to describe a piece with virtually any cut, hole, notch or bevel in it, they created the first truly robust piece description format. After considering for a time the idea of simply nominating the Hundegger file as ‘the standard,’ Koskovich instead created their own format, now used on the Miser saw, as their “can do all things” saw file.

In the last two years we’ve seen a major falloff in the introduction of new equipment. But when new equipment is introduced in the future, there is no longer any reason for a manufacturer to create an entirely new format to support it. There are several well-established ones, including the Hundegger and Miser formats that can describe virtually any piece. The bottom line for the component manufacturer: any piece of equipment you buy from any well-established equipment supplier will work with any design / production software you currently use. At some point, we may even see the day when SBCA officially sanctions one format, which would be of benefit to everyone.