Dan Puckett
January 25, 1995As told to Loretta Slepikas
I'm Dan Puckett, General Manager of American Pine Products.I've been here 33 years, going on 34. The company started as Coin Millwork in September of 1959 with 11 employees.
The COIN in Coin Millwork was the acronym for California-Oregon-Idaho-Nevada which was the source of all of our raw material. Coin Millwork started operations at the old Oregon Windor plant on Lamonta Road across from Consolidated Pine. In 1962 they wanted to grow and expand. They started moving machinery and equipment up here which was the former site of Alexander-Yawkey's sawmill. It took about three years.
I joined Coin Millwork in 1961. There were roughly 70 employees then. At the same time I was taking night classes at the college in Bend and I didn't plan on staying. Within six months they suggested that if I wanted to move through the ranks there was a lot of potential and possibilities to do that if I was willing to put in some extra time and take extra classes on my own, which I did. I worked my way up from finger joint sorter/stacker to moulder feeder; to forklift driver; to quality control manager; to day shift superintendent; to night shift superintendent; to assistant manager; to production manager and, finally, to general manager. I've had experience in every department which gave me a broad understanding of the overall operation.
As of January 1, 1995 we have 425 employees. We have had as high as 800 employees. That was when we were making a KD (knocked down) furniture. We've also made prefinished mouldings and experimented with a lot of new products some of which we've phased out. We make moulding and millwork. Which means we make door and window component parts for the door and window manufacturers. We also make interior and exterior trim for the building industry.
Our product is shipped to the east coast through a distribution system with 54 different distribution outlets. It is put into completely finished doors and windows and sold on the open market to the housing industry.
The quality of lumber we receive today has deteriorated from when I first started. Back then almost all of the product was sold in long clear lengths. Today it's made up of multiple little short pieces joined together by what we call finger joint. It used to be we would rip it and ship it--pushing large volumes out the back door at low cost. Today, costs run much higher but our dollar value out the back door is much greater. We call this "added value." Added value means we will treat the product with a weather preservative, paint it; rout for hinges and strike plates; drill little holes for screws. And we go ahead and attach the lock plates, strike plates, hinges, and special weather stripping. Anything we can do on this end to minimize the cost of assembling a door frame on the other end, we will do, if we can create an internal margin.
We are continuously looking at wood waste. At one time it wasn't uncommon to throw away 40 per cent of the board. Now, to stay in business, we have to make sure that 75 percent out of every board that we handle goes out the back door as useable fiber. We will take a low-grade product and make a sandwich by putting the low grade in the center and putting kerf strips on the top and bottom, similar to what can be seen in Formica, with ground up particle board or chip board. We put it together with a veneered edge strip and a veneered face. We do this to maximize the fiber out the back door. One percent of fiber to us is worth a half million dollars. So if we can do a better job of getting more percent of fiber from front door to back door, that will probably pay our wages next year and keep us in business.
Today we have less wood and we have to make more out of it. We've got to find products where every bit of that board is being marketed. We can't allow any of it to go to waste any more. It's a continual training strategy. We have told our people if we want to continue to get raises; continue to be competitive; continue to have a margin for future years, we have to be smarter with everything we cut.
The wood waste equates to $100,000 per month. It is ground up, sold for particle board, sold back to us as particle board or chip board or kitchen cabinetry or something. The waste from that is ground back up and put into a product that can be held together with glue and go into useable household products.
This business started out with junk machinery. We had every kind of junk that was held together with bailing wire. They didn't even own some of the machinery and equipment. From that start, as they got enough money and started making a profit, they started investing in machinery. The owners from 1962 to 1977 put almost all of the profits back into the business buying new state-of-the-art machinery and equipment.
Today we have machinery and equipment that is not only state of the art but it is the best on the market. We've taken those machines and linked them together. It's what we call integration. Integration means a board starts in Machine No. l and goes through three machines in a row, pops out of the last machine and goes right to shipping. It's done. We've completed the process.
With integration we started eliminating people. We went from 800 employees to 400 If we were to be a low cost producer and stay in business we had to lower costs and increase efficiency. It's a constant refining all of the time.
We buy two standard thicknesses of lumber, 6/4 and 5/4. That describes the thickness of the lumber. In other words 1-1/2 inches thick and 1-1/4 inches thick. In the ripping department we rip it through combination rips that carry eight standard rip sizes. From that we cut out all the knots and other defects and get the longest clear pieces we can. In this initial ripping process there are two major grades. There is the frame grade which has a one face-two edge quality; there is the clear grade which has to grade good on four sides. It is used for window sash.
We have to know what the dollar value of a board is when we start it through our operation. We take a board, map it out and see if it's worth $18.50 or $25.00. When a ripper sees that board he has to be sure he's getting every penny out of that board by the way he rips it. By making sure he gets the best combination of rips and the longest clear cuts out of the board. The ripper is well trained and he is one of the highest paid employees in the mill. Because if he doesn't rip the board properly, he's devalued it by 50 percent. From there it goes to a cutter.
The cutter goes ahead and tries to cross-cut and cut out all the defects. Between those defects, or knots, we try to get the longest clear piece we can. That clear piece is geared to a window frame opening or a door frame opening. From there, all the remaining blocks are put together. A cutter knows how to sacrifice the board to get the maximum length based on knowing what the dollar value of every cut is. Sometimes you can take one long piece and throw away two inches of wood and it's still worth more than making 10 little short pieces and utilizing them and probably getting more fiber out of them.
We take the short pieces and join them back together. We put all those little boards back together and make the piece back into a clear piece. Now all the defects are gone and we've got a clear face again. That's called the finger jointing process. We put little fingers on the ends with a lot of glue. The finished moulding is then sold for a paint grade; the clear pieces are sold for a stain grade.
From there we go to a customer's spec sheet and mould everything to his specifications. We have over 8000 moulding patterns. From those 8000 patterns, each customer has his own set of drawings, his own set of knives, and his own set of spec sheets specifying lengths, widths, combinations. And we fill his order accordingly. To put it simply, we are just one big custom workshop. The only difference being we're putting 210,000 board feet a day through the operation which is equivalent to 10 truckloads of lumber per day. That's what it takes to keep 425 people employed.
Our plant is highly computerized. Everyone has a computer on their desk in the office complex. There is all kinds of information flowing through MIS. Our blower systems are on computer controlling the pneumatic conveyors; the heat in the plant. We'll soon be controlling compressed air and lighting with the computer system.
We can tell exactly how much power we're drawing at any time of day. We know our power usage by the hour, which machines are on. We can see on the screen if anyone has left the blower on, or if there's a malfunction anywhere in the system. We are putting little PC'S on almost every machine station in the plant. And so on.
As far as the economic impact this company has had on Prineville and the community: We're supporting about a $9 million dollar payroll which is probably feeding over 400 families in Prineville. We support all community effort-- ball parks, city leagues, bowling and softball teams. The Boy Scouts. Habitat for Humanity and on and on.
At one time we were in the heart of the best timber country in the world. Today we have to go 7,000 miles or more to find timber to support our plant. As far away as Mexico and New Zealand, even Russia and Chile.
We're seeing a real revolution in the industry. We've gone the easy route and stuck with Ponderosa Pine because of its availability. But there will be other wood species that commence to play in the market if the supply of pine completely dries up. We'll find some way to survive. We'll bring in other species, some other product, some other engineering design, some other capital expenditure to guarantee our survival.
We're open to anything.