Northwest Hardwoods: A lumber industry primer.

I recently toured the Northwest Hardwoods facility in Dorchester, Wisconsin.

With 30 facilities sprawling across the United States, they have been an integral part of the forest products industry since 1967, forming as a company in the early years in the Pacific Northwest.

The company stakes it's claim to production of 14 domestically sourced species of wood products and over 20 species of "exotic" hardwoods sourced globally, from Asia, to South America.

The company operates a very nice blog, and website. They also use what they like to call "consultative sales" to provide buyer's with the best material for their products, which, with their best face forward, I'm certain they get a good amount of sales from their website alone.

My tour guide, who we will simply call "A" explained a few of the processes to me. It is pretty fascinating watching the production process as saw lumber is planed, cut, and graded. Even the stacking of material has been refined to an art form.

What many of the people who buy the material didn't learn on their tours was simple, before the bulk of material has been banded during stacking, the boards are sorted with the very best ones being placed directly on top, creating the illusion of a "perfect" bunk. Sorry to burst your bubble. Yes, like nearly any company, their is a certain level of bullshit artistry involved in a good sales pitch. Does that mean Northwest offers a sub par product to any other company? I can't say, but I also doubt it.

Another little tid bit that unless you ask you will never know is employee turn around. They cannot keep manufacturing staff on their payroll at the particular plant I was at. While the plant has excellent workers from what I can tell, from employee reviews around the internet, the "lifers" are not properly mentoring new employees, and to anyone who knows manufacturing environments quality, safety, and production drop as a result of too many new employees to be trained by too few experienced ones.

The office staff was more or less what I expected, a staffer who we will call "B" was not welcoming, so few are these days If you seem like another S.O.B. looking for your next J.O.B....Little did she know, I'd be writing this article. The reception was a little cold at first, but it improved on my way out the door!

It appeared to me, immediately, that the entire complex suffered from a distinct and chronic lack of communication. Which according to one employee review, could not be more true. I left the office on my guided tour with bickering between office and production staffers slowly fading out as I walked to some incredibly noisy work areas.

Now, I get it. Manufacturing work, and factories are not offices. Large machines planing, sawing, conveyor belts etc are not quiet machines. But, when you can't hear, communication is difficult, frustrating, and sometimes impossible, forcing people to scream in frustration to one another when they can't hear themselves think, and when you have trained your 5th new employee that week, saying the same things again and again is hard, especially in that environment. Morale lowers, experienced employees get burnt out, and soon everyone is looking for a different job, or patiently buying time to move up the ladder, if they are lucky!

Overall, what I saw was good. And it was essentially what I expected. If anyone from Northwest reads this, I believe very strongly that if you follow this advice you could be not in the top 10 forest industry companies, but number 1.

Just because some of your office staffers have been there forever, and just because your company might be a revolving door of newly hired or newly quitting employees does NOT mean they can or should be rude or cold to what may appear (and in this case appearances were misleading) like a new employee simply looking for a meal ticket. Treat people like that, and that is exactly what you will get. People won't report problems, injuries, and other issues to office staff they don't like or trust. And if the office doesn't know, no future implementation of a fix will happen, and if it does, it will be too late.

Create a training video and a training program.

Your new employees need to be up to speed faster and more efficiently considering that when things are busy, or are about to go wrong at your office, your most operations dependent personnel are taking vacation. Fix it.

You can't afford frustrating your best employees by forcing them to train everyone, they were hired to do the job you gave them, not train fellow employees.

I didn't see enough hearing protection kiosks, put them at every entrance and keep them filled. As an even better alternative 3M offers bluetooth connected/radio earmuffs which could be great for not only helping your employees communicate better, but also provide a better visual indicator that your employees are wearing hearing protection. Expensive, I know. But, worth it! Imagine being able to notify your entire crew at once via radio about new safety matters, or employee related information at the push of a button! Not to mention faster relay of safety issues such as fires or accidents, with the money it could save Northwest, it would be worth the investment!