“Storytelling may just be the best management tool available to modern business leaders because it exerts influence in ways that other techniques cannot” Annette Simmons, The Story Factor

This workshop will teach you why the story of your business is vital to your branding and marketing efforts.

Strategic storytelling can be one of the most successful ways to strengthen your business because it allows people to connect with who you are and what you do. By developing a Brand Story, which is an in-depth portrayal of your business from different perspectives, you encourage your customers, your staff, and your shareholders to identify with your brand and to see themselves as part of the story. This workshop will inspire discussion, provide insight and spark innovative ideas as to how you can market your business based on the stories that surround you.

What you will learn:

• How to build a brand story that will increase your sales, build customer loyalty, and attract new employees by allowing you to better communicate your message
• What elements you should incorporate into your brand story and who should be a part of this process
• How you can then use your Brand Story to improve your marketing strategy by turning it into content for websites, marketing materials and social media strategy.

Who should participate:

• Owner / Operator
• Communications or Marketing Manager

When and Where:

Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2011
Time: 9:00am – 1:00pm
Location: TBD

Testimonial:

“Storytelling has always been a part of what I do, but I was having difficulty putting my passion into words. Working with Megan Sheldon at Narrative Communications helped me understand how important it is to have someone outside your business look in on what you are doing, ask questions, listen, and then weave together the different points of view to create a single Brand Story. Now when we talk about our business, we share the same story, and our customers learn to retell that story, creating brand awareness. With everything we do moving forward, we look to the Brand Story to make sure we are headed in the right direction.”
- Brent Comber Studio

Save the date and register now! For more information or to register, please contact Rumin Mann at rmann@bcwood.com or 604-882-7100. We will email a registration form with the location soon.

Regenerating bones with materials of natural origin that can bear a lot of weight might not be science-fiction anymore. Scientists are looking for new ways to transform complex and organized structures that already exist in nature into a device to improve bone and ligament substitution.

The staggering similarities found with the bone brought the group of researchers working on the TEM-PLANT project to become the first one to use wood to develop organized and complex structures for tissue substitution and engineering.

Both the bone and the wood are, in fact, hard, solid and living elements with holes in their inside. At the Institute of Science and Technology for Ceramics in Faenza, Italy, a piece of red oakwood is placed into a special oven so that it becomes charcoal. The charcoal is made of carbon molecules and the real bone is mainly made of calcium. With the right pressure, temperature and chemicals scientists can modify the molecules of the probe – one by one – changing an entire piece of charcoal to a calcium based probe. “We want this material to regenerate the bone within the body and at the same time to be load-bearing, something that until now can only be achieved through metallic bars”, points out Anna Tampieri, scientific co-ordinator of the project.

Click here to read the entire article

When they look at a forest, most people see a source of paper, cardboard and lumber. But jet fuel?

The notion may seem far-fetched, but not in the beleaguered forestry industry. Efforts to produce airplane fuel, along with environmentally friendly plastics, electricity and futuristic nano-materials, are emerging as alternatives to the dimming fortunes of the sector’s traditional mainstays – newsprint and lumber.

“We’ve done extensive research. The global demand for bioproducts from the forest in the next 10 years will reach $200-billion a year,” predicts Avrim Lazar, head of the Forest Products Association of Canada, which earlier this year issued an unusual manifesto advising companies that the long-term solution to the industry’s woes is to develop sidelines as energy and bioplastics producers.

Click here to read the entire article

The University of British Columbia is using cross-laminated timber and glulam in the construction of a biomass power plant as part of its plan to reduce its carbon footprint.

A feasibility study determined that CLT would cost more than steel, but officials decided to use timber to increase the speed of construction, said Larry McFarland, principal at McFarland Marceau Architects Ltd. of Vancouver.

McFarland made his comments during the recent Cross-Laminated Timber symposium, held at the Westin Harbour Castle conference centre in Toronto. The symposium, which featured speakers from Britain, Canada, the United States and Austria, was hosted by the Canadian Wood Council (a national association of wood product manufacturers), FPInnovations (a non-profit wood research organization) and Wood Works Ontario, a Canadian Wood Council initiative to promote the use of wood in construction.

The biomass power facility, under construction at press time, will be 200 feet long and 80 feet across, McFarland said, adding it will contain about 600 cubic metres of engineered wood product, including CLT and glulam. CLT tends to be used in walls and floors, and consists of wood strips stacked crosswise on top of each other. Glulam tends to be used for columns and beams.

Click here to read the entire article

Demand for BC’s industrial goods and energy products has jumped considerably over the first half of 2011, as the province’s exports have surged 14-percent over the first six months of last year.

Year-to-date exports of industrial goods total $3.4-billion dollars, up 20-percent over the first half of 2010, while energy exports hit $4.6-billion dollars, which is an increase of 17-percent.  Forestry product exports have risen 13-percent and softwood lumber has seen a more moderate increase of nine-percent.

Figures released by Statistics Canada show that BC’s international merchandise exports from January to June were worth $15.9-billion dollars, compared with $14-billion last year.

“2011 has been an encouraging year for BC exports,” says Minister of Jobs, Tourism, and Innovation, Pat Bell.  “Every day our province is exporting $88-million dollars worth of goods worldwide, a daily increase of more than $10-million dollars compared with last year.”

Click here to read the entire article

The incredibly detailed wood-crafted pictures and scenes by artist George Phillips are on display at Lake City Ford during the 2011 Art Walk and Sale that  runs until Sept. 9 in the lakecity.

Phillips, who retires from Save-On Foods in the coming year, has enjoyed working with wood as a hobby for many years and plans to do even more wood crafting in future.

“When I retire I will become a full-time starving artist,” Phillips jokes.

He has always maintained an interest in the beauty and artistic potential of wood and uses domestic and exotic woods and veneers in his art work, as well as appropriate background materials. You will find pieces in beech, oak, maple, walnut, birch and other woods and in some cases combined woods of different colours.

Using detailed techniques of scroll and fretwork, he creates pictures that provide depth and open relief within a band or border.

Click here to read the entire article

The debt ceiling crisis has been averted, although Washington waited until virtually the last minute to do so. As the politicians focused on the debt ceiling they ignored most other business. This included funding for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

As a result, collection of federal taxes on airline tickets (an estimated loss of $1 billion or more for the month of August), which is used to fund FAA projects, stopped. Further, more than 250 aviation development projects were suspended, furloughing roughly 4,000 federal workers and putting 24,000 construction workers (non-government employees) temporarily out of work according to the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC).

Click here to read the entire article

When choosing wood for applications such as load-bearing beams in houses, it’s important not to use pieces that contain cracks or other defects that could affect their structural integrity. While not quite as crucial, it’s also nice to avoid flaws when building things like wooden furniture, piano soundboards, or window frames. Typically, people have been limited to visually checking the wood for such defects. Now, however, researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research have developed a system that highlights faults invisible to the human eye, using a process called high-power ultrasound thermography.

Using an ultrasound agitator (also known as a sonotrode), solid or composite wood is vibrated at a frequency of 20 kilohertz. At that frequency, any flaws – such as cracks, delaminations, gluing errors or knots – causes the different parts of the wood to vibrate against one another. This in turn produces heat, which is picked up and displayed on a monitor by a thermal imaging camera.

Click here to read the entire article

Escalating demand for cost-effective wood products for building applications, such as flooring and structural panels, is driving growth in the North American and European engineered wood markets.

A new report from Frost & Sullivan, entitled Strategic Analysis of the North American & European Engineered Wood Markets in Construction & Buildings, says despite the decline in housebuilding and RMI markets, volume consumption of engineered wood products is expected to pick up due to increasing consumer acceptance.

The engineered wood market is also benefiting from the trend for products which improve the environmental performance of buildings. “In the US, the development of ‘green building standards’ has been initiated in several states,” says the report. “These standards are comprehensive and provide impetus for certified wood and wood products that are associated with low emissions.”

Click here to read the entire article

The massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan has left the country with 25 million tons of debris (about 70 percent of it wood) just from homes, according to Japan’s Forestry Agency, which is proposing to build five biomass power plants.

The agency has suggested that the plants be built adjacent to timber processing plants and that they provide power and heat. Proponents say that will make the plants more economically viable than if they just produced power.

Click here to read the entire article

Trade shows are not your whole job, just a part of it. You only do, at most, a few small shows a year, and you’ve got lots of other responsibilities to handle. So all this detail in our blog about doing trade shows better? You simply have no time for it all.

But you still would like to boost your results – but only if the changes are simple and quick. So in that vein, here are 5 tips to help you — quickly — get more out of trade shows:

1. A large, clear message is easier to grasp, so make your next set of booth graphics colorful and easy to understand, with a benefit statement that will then get your prospects into your trade show booth.
2. Create a demo with motion in your trade show exhibit to get more of the right people engaged and interested. That will also get people to remember you.
3. Collecting business cards is not enough. Print paper lead cards to write more notes for the sales force to do better follow up, or get electronic lead machines from the show to get their attendee data with every badge scan.
4. Your booth staffers make a huge difference. Bring staffers who want to be there, give them support, training, and treats. Count how many qualified leads each one takes in your trade show displays to help decide who staffs the next show.
5. Do everything you can before the show to set up appointments with qualified buyers and existing clients in your booth at the show.

Click here to read the entire article

Part two in a three-part series on product development.

In part one of this series on managing product development, we looked at the importance of having a highlevel strategy to guide your efforts. (For part one, visit woodworkingcanada.com.) The next challenge for management is to determine the “how” and “who” of product development.

As companies grow, they tend to refi ne and legitimize various aspects of their business, and the area of product development is no different. At the fi rst level, product development efforts lack planning and performance tends to depend on the capabilities of a few individuals’ skills. At the second level a system is implemented to give structure so successful practices can be repeated. Product development process can be characterized at this level as practiced, documented, enforced, trained and measured. (Most wood product manufacturers tend to be at the stage where they are moving from level one to level two.) The third level focuses on optimizing processes. Failures are analyzed and there is continuous improvement. This level is more critical to fast-paced industries such as electronics where product life-cycles are short and speed to market is everything.

Several different methodologies for new product development exist. Adopting these methodologies can result in cost savings through decreased development times, improved manufacturability of new products, reduced launch costs and increased consumer satisfaction with products. Some of the more written about models include Quality Function Deployment, Stage-Gate Process, and Superior Product Development. While the details of each model differ, the basic ideas are similar. We outline the Stage-Gate process below but it’s a good idea to explore several models and then pick and choose elements to create your own, tailored process.

Click here to read the entire article

After seeing the success from their 5S activities, the next step was to get training on Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to help them map out their process and make improvements to the flow of their products. VSM is a Lean manufacturing technique used to analyze the flow of materials and information currently required to bring a product or service to a consumer.

“We saw immediate payback after we finished the VSM exercise. With one of our products, we were able to reduce the number of processes from 18 to 7. This was a huge savings in the production”, commented Ken. “Because we have been looking at our products in depth with VSM, it helped us improve our consistency and our quality”.

Without buy-in of the staff, many of the Lean concepts won’t work. “Initially, I didn’t understand how Lean could be good for our staff”, says Ken. “After all, if you can do more production with less staff, how would your employees feel? People tend to think that if you look at efficiency in production it means jobs are on the line”.

Vintage began by making small changes that let the staff experience the improvements. For example, convincing the moulder operator that he was going to save money by doing lots of shorter runs rather than setting up once and doing bigger runs was difficult at first.

However, after witnessing that the machines were not tied up and the set ups were happening three times faster, employees began coming around. Says Ken, “with less inventory we did not have our cash tied up and it kept what inventory we did have clean and fresh”. “Reduced work in progress cleared the floor, kept the staff focused and reduced the possibility of damage to the products as they made their way through the shop”.

The next steps for Vintage Woodworks include creating the framework so that its staff can sustain the Lean improvements they have already done, and getting ready for further Lean implementation.

Adds Ken,” I have been really lucky to have an Operations Manager in our company that truly believes in the Lean journey. Working together, our staff is looking forward to future changes and the benefits it will result for them”. “We anticipate it will take Vintage some time before we meet our goals, however each step we take we should realize an improvement on our productivity”.

Brian Ehrecke is a manufacturing specialist for FPInnovations. FPInnovations is a company with over 25 years of experience providing technical and manufacturing support to the wood products industry in Canada. He can be reached at (250) 462-4000 or brian.ehrecke@fpinnovations.ca.

MLIT reported last week that housing starts were up 5.8% in June. This marks the third straight month of increases after the March 11th earthquake. In April starts were up 0.3% and 6.4% in May. The June figures received a large boost from the condo sector as it was up 47.9%. Rental housing starts were up 4.6%. This was the first increase in nine months for rental units.

While shortages of plywood and other materials delayed construction across the country in March and April, the strong rebound since then indicates that there is still strong demand amongst consumers despite uncertainties in the overall economy resulting from the earthquake as well weak overseas markets. Some of this demand is being driven by the combination of historically low interest rates along with fears of a consumption tax increase as the Japanese government looks for ways to pay for reconstruction while also getting its deficit under control.

The government has not yet unveiled any specific plans or schedule for an increase, but there has been speculation that it could rise from the current 5% to anywhere from 8% to 15%. A significant jump would have a strong negative impact on housing starts, so some large home builders are already calling on the government to include at least a partial exemption on housing.

Aside from the tax hike fears, many industry people see the recent increases in starts as simply a recovery from the lows caused by the after-effects of the “Lehman Shock” in 2007. A recent report published by the Nomura Research Institute predicts that housing starts will continue to increase through 2015 and peak at 841,000 that year (in 2010 they were 813,126) . After that demographics combined with longer lasting homes will force starts to decline. However, even with such downward pressure, Nomura believes that starts will still be at the 785,000 level even in 2023.

Powered by solar and heated and cooled by geothermal systems, Okanagan College‘s new Centre of Excellence lives up to its title. This new building in British Columbia (B.C.)  is a contender for Living Building Challenge qualification — a system that goes beyond LEED Platinum to require both net zero energy and water consumption.

The building will operate both as a setting for classes at Okanagan College as well as a showcase for green building systems and materials, particularly those originating in B.C. Other than a hardwood gymnasium floor (sourced from Ontario), the project features 100 per cent B.C. wood, including pine from beetle-kill affected forests FSC-certified lumber.  Wherever possible, the building’s mechanical and electrical services have been left exposed to demonstrate the technology in action, as part of the building’s teaching capacity.

image via Okanagan College

The Centre of Excellence features the a 258 kilowatt-capacity photovoltaic solar panel array, believed to be the largest in Western Canada. It was designed to use around a fifth of the energy consumed by a conventional building of similar size and reuses all of its waste and greywater onsite (after chemical-free treatment by the City of Penticon).

More information on the building’s green profile is available online.

Source: Earth Techling – August 3, 2011

As green becomes the new gold standard, hotel owners and operators are increasingly looking to differentiate their brands through environmentally responsible facilities that get the attention of eco-conscious travelers. A 2010 survey of U.S. travelers found this strategy is effective; 48 percent of travelers said they would select a supplier that shows concern for the environment over those that do not. In addition to attracting business, investing in environmentally friendly features can cut operational costs and benefit the hotel’s bottom line.

To gain this competitive edge with consumers, owners commonly pursue widely recognized accreditations, such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. For wood, however, complying with the requirements to gain a LEED point has impacts throughout the product supply chain and may have the unintended consequence of encouraging tropical deforestation.

Early in the construction of a new hotel or renovation of an existing structure, architects and designers must make decisions about the woods they will specify. Color schemes of rooms and floors must integrate the patterns and colors of wood selections. Once a wood is selected, the suppliers must identify sources of supply for all of the lumber and veneer. This is where current design practice creates a problem in selection that has repercussions all the way to the forest.

Click here to read the entire article

Jobs, Tourism and Innovation Minister Pat Bell remains hopeful a major announcement on the next steps for the Wood Innovation and Design Centre will be made this summer.

“We’re still not quite there yet but I’m feeling optimistic people are going to be very pleased when they see the rollout,” Bell said Thursday.

Bell, the MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie, declined to provide much more in specifics.

“If I told you that, I’d be revealing all the details,” he said when asked what stage the process the proposal is at.

But he later said it’s a structure for which there is no building code yet.

“We’ve had to deal with the complexities of that but I think we’ve got that pretty well figured out now,” Bell said.

Click here to read the entire article

100 years after Strathcona became our first provincial park, there is plenty to be proud of – but work remains

There is much to be grateful for on this B.C. Day weekend. At the top of the list should be this province’s glorious diadem of provincial parks.

Almost a thousand are scattered across an area so vast you could fit within B.C.’s boundaries the American states of Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and half of Hawaii for good measure.

Put another way, if you were to consider B.C.’s parks and protected areas one geographical entity, it would be equivalent to the 16th-largest country in Europe or the seventh-largest province in Canada or the 24th-largest state in the U.S.

This year marks the centennial of B.C.’s provincial parks system, launched in 1911 with Strathcona Park on Vancouver Island, although a colonial park outside Fort Victoria was reserved by James Douglas in 1858 and probably has a claim on being the first official park.

Click here to read the entire article

B.C.’s American exports dramatically down, with no sign of rebound anytime soon

Lacklustre second-quarter financial results coming from Canadian softwood lumber producers underline the continued importance of the United States housing market to the industry.

Canfor Corp. was the latest to report second-quarter figures showing a sharp drop in net income, to $26.2 million compared with $43.7 million in the same quarter of 2010, which it attributed to poor U.S. demand and a steep drop in North American prices.

Canfor CEO Don Kayne, in the company’s statement, said a record level of shipments to Asia during the second quarter were a bright spot, but “a sustained recovery of lumber markets and prices will not begin until there is a turnaround in the U.S. economy,” particularly housing construction.

Canfor noted that besides poor U.S. demand, a bulge in inventories due to bad weather helped push the price for the standard measure of lumber to an average $240 US per-thousand-board-feet during the second quarter, $56 lower than the previous quarter.

Last week, West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. reported a steep fall-off in its second-quarter profit, down to $10 million from $67 million in the second quarter of 2010. Quebec-based Tembec also reported a loss on its lumber operations.

“Even though China is a very welcome addition [to the market] you really need the U.S. market to come back to really drive profitability,” industry analyst Kevin Mason said in an interview.