TOMPKINSVILLE, Ky. — Essentially there
has been only one name for Anderson Forest Products since it first
automated its pallet manufacturing operations decades ago: Viking
Engineering & Development Inc. Anderson, a prominent manufacturer of
hardwood pallets, has relied on Viking for 20 years for automated pallet
assembly equipment.
"As far as I’m concerned, Viking is
the only show in pallet assembly," said Kerry Anderson, vice
president of the company.
Anderson Forest Products is a diverse
company with operations in three states. The company has an affiliated
sawmill business that manufactures hardwood grade lumber for domestic and
foreign markets. At its plant in Tompkinsville, Anderson manufactures
pallets and also reels for the wire cable and rope industries. The company
has a small facility in Nebraska where it manufactures pallets and reels,
and it also has a small facility in Arkansas where it assembles reels.
The lumber operations produce some 400,000
board feet per week of grade lumber and pallet cants. The Tompkinsville
plant manufactures about 30-35 truckloads of pallets per week, and the
Nebraska plant, about 3-4 truckloads. Reels are a very significant portion
of the company’s business; reel production is about 3,500 per day at
Tompkinsville and 800 daily in Nebraska.
The sawmill employs about 90 workers, and
the Kentucky pallet plant, 110. The Nebraska plant employs another 18
workers, and four workers staff the Arkansas facility.
The company has grown steadily and
continues to expand. Last year the business grew about 20%, and Kerry
expects similar growth in 2001.
His father, Billy Joe Anderson, started the
business in his mid-20s when he bought the sawmill in Munfordville,
Kentucky; Billy Joe was working for a lumber company at the time. The
sawmill manufactured grade lumber, and in 1972 Billy Joe added pallet
manufacturing operations. Workers assembled pallets by hand, but within a
few years the company added a pair of used Morgan nailing machines. In
1975 the pallet manufacturing operations were moved to Billy Joe’s
hometown of Tompkinsville, about 60 miles away. Four years later the
company made another strategic expansion, venturing into the manufacture
of wood and plywood reels for the wire and rope industries.
Anderson completely revamped its sawmill in
1990 with the installation of three new Salem 6-foot band mills. The
company later added drying and planer and finishing operations and put in
additional kiln capacity and pre-drying facilities in 1997; it now has
450,000 board feet of dry kiln capacity and 350,000 board feet of
pre-drying capacity.
Grade lumber is sold to domestic and
foreign customers. Anderson did considerable business in Pacific Rim
markets until the Asian economy soured, when it switched to European
markets.
All cants produced from the sawmill are
trucked to the pallet plant, supplying about 60% of the raw material
required for the pallet operations. The company buys additional cants and
also pallet cut stock from other sawmills.
Pallet Mill
In the pallet mill, nearly all of the
company’s cut-up operations have been supplied by Brewer Inc. The plant
is equipped with a Brewer twin-select cut-off saw and a Salem single
cut-off saw. Once cut to size, cant material is resawn on a pair of Brewer
double-arbor gang saws. One of the gang saws has a Campbell stacker behind
it.
Anderson recently added a Brewer three-head
horizontal band saw system that is being used to recover deckboards from
thin slabs of SPF and aspen. The pallet plant also is equipped with
several Brewer chamfering and notching machines.
For its reel manufacturing operations, the
company uses panel saws and a CNC machine to cut plywood and OSB that are
used for the ends or flanges. Material for reels made of laminated lumber
is cut to size on an L-M Equipment package saw and fastened together on an
FMC machine that drives and clinches nails; the laminated panels are cut
on a bandsaw into circular flanges. The work of assembling the flanges and
cores is done by hand.
Anderson began its association with Viking
Engineering & Development in 1981 when the company invested in a
Viking Duo-Matic automated pallet assembly system. By 1985 Anderson was
running the machine on two shifts.
Anderson installed a new Viking Turbo 505
nailing machine last fall — the fourth Viking system it has owned. The
company typically acquires a machine from Viking in a 4-5 year
lease-purchase agreement and trades it in for a new replacement machine at
the end of the lease, according to Kerry.
Nebraska Expansion
The company launched operations in Nebraska
in 1998 in order to serve a customer that opened a new manufacturing plant
in the state. "We followed the customer out there and then picked up
other business," said Kerry, who joined his father at Anderson in
1983.
The Nebraska plant also has pallet
manufacturing and reel assembly operations. The plant mainly buys SPF
pallet cut stock, so there is little lumber remanufacturing equipment
other than a few chop saws and rip saws. Workers manually assemble reels
from parts that arrive in knock-down form from Anderson’s Kentucky
pallet plan. Operations in Arkansas also involve manual assembly of reel
components made in Kentucky.
When time came to equip the Nebraska plant
with a pallet nailing machine, the company considered systems from other
suppliers and tried them, Kerry said. Anderson elected to stay with
Viking, however, because of the quality of the company’s machinery, its
service and support, said Kerry.
Viking Sentinel
Anderson equipped its Nebraska facility
with a Viking Sentinel, and the company has been pleased with its
performance. "For the requirements we have (at the Nebraska plant),
it does the job," said Kerry.
Viking introduced the Sentinel at the
Richmond Expo in the spring of 1998. The machine represented a new
marketing strategy for Viking, the leading U.S. manufacturer of automated
pallet assembly equipment. Prior to its introduction of the Sentinel,
Viking focused on large-scale, high-volume pallet assembly systems. With
the Sentinel, Viking entered the entry-level market for smaller pallet
nailing machines, too.
The Sentinel was designed and manufactured
to be attractive to both pallet manufacturers and recyclers. Sentinel
owners range from companies that produce 300 pallets a day that can be
assembled by machine to larger companies that may require a low-volume
system for short runs. The Sentinel can be operated by one man and has an
automatic stacker.
The Sentinel, which has a small footprint
so that it can be used in companies with limited space, can assemble
pallets with new or used lumber, ranging in size from 28×28 to 60×60. It
is capable of assembling pallets with two, three or four stringers and
pallets with butted boards or solid decks as well as single-wing or
double-wing pallets.
Computer controls ensure consistent nail
locations. Sensors measure each deckboard to determine the number of nails
and nail locations.
Bulk Nailing
Another important benefit is that the
machine, like other Viking nailing systems, uses bulk nails. In fact, it
is the only pallet assembly machine in its price range that uses bulk
nails.
Bulk nails offer several advantages over
collated nails, including lower cost. Bulk nails may be 40% cheaper than
collated nails, depending on the region of the country and quantities
ordered, and may cost even less.
In addition, based on standards for nail
performance, bulk nails are more resistant to pallet joint separation. The
bulk nail has a larger head, is slightly longer, and — unlike collated
nails — has continuous, deeper spirals. Pneumatically powered nailing
tools are not capable of consistently countersinking nails, and their high
nail insertion speeds actually destroy wood fiber around the nail, which
impairs holding power; hydraulically powered nailing systems completely
countersink nails and push them into the wood in a way that promotes the
effect of screwing the nail into the wood, which minimizes damage to wood
fiber and increases holding power.
Viking designed the Sentinel with a unique
stacking mechanism. The stacker grips the finished pallet, picks it up,
and places it in a stack on the plant floor. The advantage is that a stack
of finished pallets can be moved with a pallet jack instead of a forklift.
Pallet nailing machines typically are equipped with stackers that
accumulate pallets on steel rollers, and they must be removed with a
forklift.
At Anderson’s Nebraska plant, one worker
operates the Sentinel and assembles about 400 pallets per day. "It’s
a good machine for what it’s designed for," said Kerry. "It’s
not (for) mass production. It’s operator-friendly."
The machine runs at a pace that allows the
operator to grade pallet components before placing them into the machine,
Kerry noted; parts with slight imperfections can be turned inward while
defective parts can be culled.
Kerry initially was concerned about the
Sentinel stacking mechanism but said it has performed well. The company
operates the Sentinel on one shift although production sometimes runs
10-12 hours daily.
New Viking Turbo 505
Anderson’s other Viking machine, the new
Turbo 505 at Tompkinsville, has significantly faster change-over time than
the older Turbo 505 that it replaced, according to Kerry. "That’s
where they’ve really improved this machine, the change-over time."
By the time the left-over lumber from one production run is moved out and
replaced with the parts for the next pallet size, "the machine is
ready to go. It’s a very quick change-over." The hydraulic system
is "way ahead" of the older model, he added.
"That’s what I like about
Viking," said Kerry. "Every time you buy something, it’s…better
than before." The company has enjoyed a double-digit percentage
increase in pallet production with the new Turbo 505, he said.
The new Turbo machine has a modem
connection that allows Viking service personnel to remotely dial into the
system via telephone and perform trouble-shooting and diagnostic work.
That feature has helped keep down-time to a minimum, Kerry said.
At Tompkinsville, in addition to assembling
pallets on the Viking Turbo 505, Anderson manufactures a limited volume of
pallets by hand with power nailing tools. It has two work stations staffed
by four employees making custom pallets, including block pallets. The
custom work is performed as a service to customers and is not a niche
market that Anderson seeks out.
Anderson is not heavily into the GMA pallet
market, Kerry said. "We make everything from heavy-duty drum pallets
to 1/2-inch expendable pallets," he said. The company manufactures 70
pallet sizes, said Kerry, who called the figure a conservative estimate.
Orders typically are for truck-load
quantities. About 80% of the time, a truckload will contain pallets of the
same size. "Very rarely does a truckload have more than three
sizes," said Kerry.
Anderson’s pallet customers include
businesses in food processing, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Its
market area generally is within a 500-mile radius. The company has a fleet
of 14 tractors and 50 trailers to do its own shipping.
The company has limited pallet recycling
operations for a few customers who require the service; Anderson retrieves
their pallets, refurbishes them and returns the used pallets to the
customers. It provides a similar recycling service to some reel customers.
About two years ago the company added wood
recycling operations in the form of producing mulch and colored mulch. The
company invested in a Rotochopper machine to grind wood waste into mulch
and color it; Anderson previously processed scrap wood in a grinder and
sold it as raw material to a charcoal manufacturer. Colored mulch is
marketed in Kentucky and Tennessee and additionally in large metropolitan
areas. The company’s most popular colors are dark brown, black, and red.
Exploiting Niches
Billy Joe, 60, continues to work every day.
Kerry’s duties pertain to operations. "Dad is the strategist,"
he said.
When asked to assess the reasons for the
company’s high level of success and growth, Kerry cited a couple of
reasons, including his father’s strategic thinking. "I think he’s
done a good job as far as seeing niches in the market and exploiting
those," he said. His father has been willing to consider new
opportunities and to change.
It was at his father’s initiative, for
example, that the company ventured into reel manufacturing. At the time,
Anderson had a pallet customer that also used cable reels. "He wanted
to try it," said Kerry.
Certainly, serving customers has been an
important factor in the company’s staying power. Anderson has helped
customers to reduce pallet costs, Kerry noted.
"One of the things that’s unusual
about us is that we have several customers that we’ve retained since we
first started. We have a core group of customers that has been with us at
least 15 years. We feel that the service we give them is what sets us
apart. Anybody can make a pallet, and some companies make good pallet
products. But good service is hard to find. It’s the same way with reel
customers. It’s all about service and relationships with those
customers."
