Where this all started, and still the deepest bench.
Lumber mills, millwork plants, kiln dryers, distribution warehouses. Twenty-five years of production scheduling, plant management, and the automation that keeps an aging ERP talking to modern tools.
This is the floor we actually came up on, and it's still where we've built the most: multi-shift scheduling, plant management systems, PLC and microcontroller work, the works.
A mill or a distribution warehouse doesn't fail because nobody's working hard enough. It fails because the schedule lives in someone's head, the ERP was built for a different decade, and the reporting nobody trusts gets double-checked by hand anyway.
We build the plant management systems, scheduling tools, and shop-floor automation that close that gap, without ripping out the mainframe-era backbone that's still doing its job underneath.
What that's looked like
- Production scheduling and capacity planning across multiple shifts and locations
- Custom plant management software: orders, routing, receiving, yield, WMS
- PLC and microcontroller work, from ladder logic to Arduino-driven line control
- ERP and mainframe automation, cutting thousands of manual keystrokes down to none
- Kiln digitization: handheld scanners (Intermec CK71) loading charges, a real-time board showing what is in each charge and since when, and one-click conversion of inventory tags from green to kiln-dried (KD)
- Distributed irrigation where zones bid for water based on need, so the facility never runs past its throughput
- Queued sprinkling sized to leave only small puddles, with discharge limits built into the schedule
- A weather station that estimates how long the puddles need to evaporate, and sets the next watering from that
- Kiln wastewater discharge control: automatic controls, backup reservoirs, and a cooling and discharge tank, so water leaves only after it has cooled to the permitted temperature
- Time and attendance systems, and resource planning across shifts and sites
- Backup strategy and disaster recovery built for plants that can't afford downtime