Republicans and Democrats constantly lament the loss of middle-class jobs. Depending on your political leanings, it’s because of poor immigration policies, government rules and regulations, or unfair trade deals. The blame game by politicians may help manipulate votes and agendas but it creates a dichotomy between perception and reality as to an irrefutable culprit—technology.
Technology is a job killer that no political group can make a convincing argument against; it takes jobs that will never be returned. It is reality.
The best examples of how technology is affecting middle-class jobs can be found in two new mills currently being constructed.
Investments in Dixie
Georgia-Pacific is constructing a $100 million, 300,000-square-foot lumber mill in Talladega, Ala., that will utilize some of the most advanced production technologies. The mill expects to receive 150 log trucks per day and produce approximately 230 million board-feet of lumber per year. The mill will take a year to build and will provide 120 jobs per day during construction. When it opens, this huge mill will utilize just 100 fulltime employees. That is amazing and very telling of where jobs are going.
Meanwhile, Roy O. Martin is opening a huge, 158-acre OSB plant near Corrigan, Texas. The $280 million plant will feature some of the industry’s newest manufacturing technologies. This world-class facility will employ 165 people and be a huge provider to suppliers in Texas and Louisiana.
Don’t misunderstand; both Georgia-Pacific and Roy O. Martin are to be commended for their huge investments and their commitment to new technology. The amazing thing to consider is that these two huge manufacturing facilities equal investments of $380 million and will produce massive amounts of building material products, while using just 265 employees. Technology is the biggest reason why production jobs in the mill and manufacturing industries have plunged from 517,300 in January 2000 to 310,100 in August 2017.
What Tech Can Do for You
Embracing new technology should be happening in your LBM business. The use of new technology in truss plants over the last 20 years should have increased your saw capacity by at least three-fold, using half as many people. Truss designers should be producing two to three times the number of designs daily. Accounting software should have eliminated more than half of your backroom staff. The number of salespeople to generate the same amount of business should be down. Your warehouse staff and truck drivers should be more efficient; and the number of mistakes and callbacks greatly reduced. The list of improvements can continue endlessly.
That said, we all know embracing technology can be hard. There are a lot of independent dealers that are slow to accept new technology and new methods because their executives cling to antiquated procedures. Going paperless is the biggest problem for many older executives, as they cannot grasp the thought that a backup paper file isn’t needed when information can be stored electronically in the cloud.
Reducing the Gap
The technology gap between independent dealers and national providers is where most dealers are getting clobbered on price. The more that technology can help your business cut actual man-hours, the more successful you can compete. Computers don’t call in sick and they will work all the overtime you ask of them.
For some companies, their obsession with technology has been their undoing by trying to implement systems that were not ready or were never really a good idea. There are many national companies in the cemetery of failure because their executives went all-in on a pie-in-the-sky technology that had no chance of working.
My view is simple. Embrace technology and invest in products that are simple and that reduce actual labor and tasks. Avoid getting wooed by shiny objects from some new report, as reports typically don’t cut labor and they waste time. There is no argument that technology is reducing middle-class jobs and our industry is proof of it. Don’t let it reduce your job.
