Practical guidance for better manufacturing decisions
These onsite summaries turn Todd Drummond’s published ideas into practical starting points for component manufacturers. Read the core guidance here, follow the related service pathways, or open the original LinkedIn publication for the complete source article.
Featured Onsite Insights
Current guidance on labor standards, constraints, and decision-making—organized to help you connect an operating problem with a useful next step.
Board Foot and Work Minutes Can Coexist
Board foot remains useful for sales reporting, legacy comparisons, and familiar company-level measures. It does not, however, describe how much labor a particular job will consume under the conditions in which it will actually be produced. Two orders with similar board footage can create very different demands when design complexity, materials, equipment, setup, and production methods change.
Engineered work minutes answer a different operating question: how much constrained labor capacity should this work require? Used alongside board foot—not as a forced replacement—validated work-minute standards can give management a clearer basis for estimating, loading, scheduling, staffing, capacity planning, and margin review. A practical rollout starts with the true constraint, compares the standard with observed conditions, and expands only after the measure proves dependable.
Application question: Are you using the same unit to quote, schedule, and judge capacity even when job difficulty changes?
Stop Chasing Efficiency, Remove the Bottleneck, and Let Profits Rise
Busy people and busy machines do not automatically create more shipped output. Every operating system has a limiting point, and total throughput cannot move faster than that constraint. Improving a non-constraint may reduce labor in one area, but it can also produce more work-in-process and hide the reason customer commitments or financial results are not improving.
The first management task is to identify what is currently setting the pace. The constraint may be sales, design, administration, production, or delivery—and it can move as conditions change. Once it is visible, protect its available time, control the work released toward it, and direct improvement effort or capital toward the limitation that governs the whole system. This separates labor-savings ROI from true throughput ROI and makes equipment decisions easier to evaluate.
Application question: Will the next improvement increase total shipped output, or only make a non-constraint look more efficient?
The OODA Loop and the New Reality of the Truss and Wall Panel Industry
The OODA Loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—offers a disciplined way to respond when market conditions, labor availability, product mix, or customer expectations change faster than an annual plan. Observation gathers what is actually happening. Orientation connects those facts across sales, design, administration, production, workforce practices, layout, and capital. Decision selects the most useful next move, and action tests it against results.
The value is not speed alone; it is the quality of the cycle. A company that jumps from a visible symptom directly to equipment or automation can solve the wrong problem. A stronger process looks across the system, uses operating evidence, chooses a practical priority, and measures what changed before repeating the loop. That keeps improvement grounded in the operation rather than in assumptions or fashionable answers.
Application question: Before changing equipment, layout, or workflow, have you separated the visible symptom from the underlying cause?
Onsite Knowledge Library
Browse practical guidance by operating challenge. Every article below is available here on the TDC website.
Labor and Work Minutes
- Truss Manufacturing Time StandardsSee how engineered labor standards can support estimating, scheduling, capacity planning, performance measurement, and pricing.
- Employees—Wages, Retention, and ProductivityExamine the relationship among compensation, retention, turnover, productivity, and total workforce cost.
Profit, Pricing, and Capacity
- Margins in Component ManufacturingConsider how better labor visibility and production information can support more informed margin and pricing decisions.
Workforce and Incentives
- Leading Change in Component ManufacturingReview a practical framework for addressing resistance and moving from a recognized problem toward useful action.
Component-Manufacturing Growth
- Component Manufacturing for a Lumberyard—Pros and ConsExamine the opportunities, operating complexity, management demands, and planning questions involved.
- Home Builders Using Wall PanelsExplore how wall-panel construction can affect scheduling, labor coordination, site activity, and capacity.
Need help applying an idea to your operation? Review TDC consulting services or describe the challenge to Todd.
Earlier Published Articles
These original publications remain useful background reading on communication, mistake-proofing, labor, and automation.
Historical context: Product references and data in these articles reflect their original publication dates. Use the current service pages below for today’s Todd Drummond Consulting offerings.
Maintaining Successful Project Management Communications
A look at why schedules, assignments, documents, messages, and accountability work better when project information is organized around a shared operating record.
Mistake-Proof Your Process with Must-Have Communication Features
An application of Poka-Yoke thinking to project communication, emphasizing clear records, visible responsibilities, timely alerts, and less duplicate entry.
Labor Shortages and Why Automation Is Not a Cure-All
A reminder that automation cannot by itself resolve staffing, productivity, quality, or process problems. Demographic figures in the source reflect its 2021 data period.
More Published Work
Browse additional articles and industry contributions through these original publication sources.
Client Experience
Ideas That Lead to Action
I’ve been reading Todd’s articles for the last few years and have been intrigued by his view of productivity measures, so I decided to hire him to learn more about his philosophy.
Turn an article idea into an operating decision
Have a question about labor standards, a bottleneck, workflow, equipment, or the first practical improvement step? Describe the issue you are trying to solve, and Todd can help identify the most useful place to begin.