Local News, Technology, personnel at root of success - Daily Inter Lake

October 06, 2019 at 5:00 am | Editor’s note: In recognition of Flathead Manufacturing Month, the Daily Inter Lake will be spotlighting local manufacturers in the Sunday business

As technology becomes ever more complicated, making wood products may seem like a low-tech process from the simpler days of manufacturing. But Weyerhaeuser’s Flathead Valley mills have brought these traditional products into the 21st century.

“I think people who haven’t seen our mills would be surprised by how driven we are by technology,” said Tom Ray, the Montana region resources manager at Weyerhaeuser. He added their operations are “much different than [they] used to be.”

The national timber company concentrates its Montana operations in the Flathead Valley, with three mills, a forestry office and an information technology office employing approximately 580 people locally. Its mills in Kalispell produce plywood and solid sawn studs, and its Columbia Falls facility makes medium-density fiberboard often used in cabinetry and shelving.

The Seattle-based company was founded in 1900 and has grown into the largest private landowner in the country. Weyerhaeuser came onto the local scene through a merger with Plum Creek Timber Co. in 2016, but Ray pointed out “the mills have been in the valley for decades.”

While the plants themselves have had a long tenure here, their inner workings have changed dramatically in recent years.

“We continue to work on different projects to modernize and be more efficient,” Ray stated. “We completed a large technology update at the MDF just this summer.”

At the lumber mill farther south off U.S. 2, Maintenance Electrical Supervisor Charlie Wilson compared the sawmill’s technological advancements to the ever-evolving innovations of computers. The Flathead High School graduate has worked in the sawmill for 22 years and said, “we’re constantly striving to improve.”

Wilson explained how they use technology like automated scanners to determine the most efficient way to cut each log in the handful of seconds it takes each piece to run through the machinery.

They further optimize their production later on in the process with a curve saw made up of 11 circle saws. “If you watch it, it’s actually curving through the logs” to achieve the optimal cut, Wilson explained.

“It’s hard because we don’t know what we’re going get out of these logs,” Shane Stratton, the plywood production supervisor, pointed out. Devices like the scanners and the curve saw allow the Weyerhaeuser team to navigate around uncertainties and address imperfections.

At the sawmill, the majority of products are 2x4 and 2x6 studs.

“Most of our wood comes locally,” Wilson said, and the finished products primarily go to Texas to be used in home construction.

At the nearby plywood plant, meanwhile, the products are almost entirely made to order. Stratton said the destinations for these products are “diversified,” with many pieces of local plywood going into niche markets such as recreational vehicles throughout the Midwest.

The wide variety of plywood types produced there makes the Kalispell plywood plant unique, Stratton explained. Many of its products are unavailable elsewhere and unfamiliar to individuals outside the industry, including “specialty products” with technical names such as Weyerhaeuser’s “proprietary HDF Ultra-Core, High Density Overlay and Medium Density Overlay.”

The local plywood plant is also unique in the technological innovations it employs to create these distinctive products. Stratton said they were “the first company in North America” to refurbish 1960s technology with 21st century upgrades when they added modern arms to decades-old machinery known as pluggers. These hybrid devices ferret out defects and insert pieces of good wood as replacements.

In this and other stages of plywood production, Stratton explained they use technology to “try to get the most consistent feel out of that log.”

Stratton and Wilson also emphasized the importance of recovery as a driver behind ever-improving technology.

Across the three mills, they strive to reuse every part of the logs, Wilson explained. Bark from shaved logs fuels the boiler, chips and sawdust are repurposed at the MDF plant and exposed log cores are sold to a local landscaper.

“The idea…is to increase recovery,” and sustainability, Wilson said.

He added, “all of our machinery is for the most part automated,” but there is “still a lot of manual labor involved” throughout the operations.

In addition to its cutting-edge technology, Weyerhaeuser relies on a wide variety of personnel, including IT specialists, quality-control technicians, machinists and many others.

“We’re always hiring,” Ray said, especially for entry-level positions in activities like identifying and pulling out high-quality pieces of plywood. Despite its technological innovations, Weyerhaeuser maintains, “our secret weapon is our people.”

Ray added the Flathead Valley is “attractive for manufacturing” because of the people here and their “great work ethic.”

“The majority [of our employees] do come from here,” Ray said. Just like the trees they use in their mills, Ray said the people here are another “great resource.”

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at bserbin@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4459.

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