National Hardwood Magazine - November 2013

Alan McIlvain Company

Alan McIlvain Company continued from page 18 He continued, “We have a lot of things that are changing right now. The technology updates that we’ve made in the past have been expanded upon. We’re generally pretty flexible to things. If something works, it sticks and if it doesn’t work, we’re all very comfortable eliminating it quickly so that we can utilize that energy to try something else that will work. “None of the changes we’re making are radical—we’re going to continue to offer quality lumber and lumber products.” Current Operations Manager Alan McIlvain Jr.’s son, Alan ‘Lan’ McIlvain III, offered, “Since the recession started, the market has changed. We fill more customized orders for sizes and sorts and smaller orders. We’ve been able to adapt to that by having the right technology in place. We installed an entirely new rip system that makes changeovers and managing smaller more detailed orders much easier. Some people have the tendency to fight the direction that the market is going, we’ve embraced it. We said, ‘this is what our customer wants’, now figure out how to continue to profit from it and there’s our focus.” With 275,000 square feet of warehouse space, Alan McIlvain Co. is equipped with a 30-bin MIC sorter, a Softac laser/scanner/optimizer, a GBI automatic stick placing stacker and five Weinig moulders, equipped to accommodate up to 12-inch profiles. The company’s American Wood Dryer dry kilns have a capacity of 500,000 board feet. Today the company stocks Custom African Mahogany mouldings manufactured at Alan McIlvain Co. more than 20,000 profile knives and has custom grinding machinery at its facility, offering the capability to produce the most challenging custom moulding orders. As to the many changes that Alan McIlvain Company has made over the past few years Lan explained, “We’re more data driven than ever before. That’s probably the largest change that the 2006 LumberTrack installation has enabled. We keep production and sales data on just about everything. We can determine whether work was completed in a satisfactory amount of time, and can produce a full audit trail for every item on every order, from the time the lumber was delivered to us from the sawmill to the final delivery to the customer. We also retain a detailed customer history that allows us to better serve the particular needs of specific customers. Those are the things that make a difference at the bottom line. Are we really doing the best that we can or are we just doing what we can and making ends meet? Those are questions we couldn’t answer before without the data. Not only are we now asking those questions more frequently, we’re empowered to get answers and implementing changes where required. We have basically integrated into something bigger, better and smarter.” Weld added, “With the installation of our optimizing ripsaw, we didn’t just ‘get a new saw’. This changed the way we can process our orders and reduced setup times. Lan designed a brilliant infeed/outfeed system for the saw, which significantly reduced the CARL ROSENBERRY & SONS LUMBER, INC. 7446 Path Valley Road Fort Loudon, PA 17224 Phone: (717) 349-2289 FAX: (717) 349-2044 www.rosenberrylumber.com Two automatic circle mills and line bar band resaw Maintaining 700,000’ K.D. inventory and 1,000,000 bd. ft. of Green and Air Dried lumber 300,000 bd. ft. Kiln Capacity KILN DRYING FINE PENNSYLVANIA HARDWOODS ANNUAL PRODUCTION 7,000,000ʼ 75% Red and White Oak Email inquiries to Jackie Kriner at jackie@rosenberrylumber.com 38 NOVEMBER 2013 ■ NATIONAL HARDWOOD MAGAZINE

traffic in the middle of the yard. We’re using the saw differently than a normal ripsaw. We can get up to 10 bundles in a queue. The bundles can be fed independently into the saw all by a single operator. It gives the operator a lot of slack to work with and they’re no longer slaves to the saw one bundle at a time. The ripsaw has changed the way we produce special rip sizes for our custom mouldings.” Heavily focused on imports, about 30 percent of the company’s inventory is Sapele, African Mahogany, Spanish Cedar and Ipe. “We visit producers in Africa and South America regularly,” Lan explained. In 2012 International Wood Products Association President Alan McIlvain Jr. strengthened relationships with international suppliers, which, according to Lan was very advantageous for the company. Other products offered by Alan McIlvain Company is Hardwood flooring in wider widths. “We’re producing a lot of rustic White Oak and Walnut flooring,” Jordan explained. “But it’s not your typical 2 or 3-inch flooring. This is more like 6-8-10-12-inches and wider. We offer a lot of Ipe and Tali decking now also, which we’re currently shipping all over the country.” Alan McIlvain Company has approximately 80 employees. The company was established in 1798 by Hugh McIlvain, a Philadelphia Quaker of Scottish ancestry. “We have always been about service and quality,” Lan said. “We want to get just the right widths, lengths and grade delivered to where the customer wants it and when they want it.” “The customer comes first, we partner with our customers for their success,” Alan McIlvain Jr. added. “We offer just-in-time inventory,” Lan continued. “We’re a warehouse for our customers. Many are smaller shops and can’t inventory large volumes, especially since the recession began. Often times our customers are consuming lumber within minutes of being Moulder operators check the details of a custom moulding order. taken off our trucks. We’ve seen a lot of that. Delivery is one of our biggest advantages. With our fleet of tarpside tractor-trailers and short trucks, we know that we can get the order to its destination before our competition. We are usually the fastest when it comes to time sensitivity.” Weld concluded, “One of the more important things that we want to stress is that our generation is interested in doing good business. We want to be exceptional at it. We’ve got some of the strongest roots in the world and I believe we’re going to do really incredible things. We’ve been born into a legacy and we’re proud of it. We’re going to do really well carrying the torch for our generation.” Forest Stewardship Council certified, Alan McIlvain Company is a member of the National Hardwood Lumber Association, Architectural Woodwork Institute, International Wood Products Association and Hardwood Distributor’s Association. For more information visit www.alanmcilvain.com. ■ www.kretzlumber.com Quality North American Hardwoods Continuing to Move Forward Kiln Dried Lumber Rip to Width Butcher Blocks Kretz Lumber Company Inc. W11143 1143 Highway G, Antigo, WI 54409 1-800-352-1438 715-623-5410 NOVEMBER 2013 ■ NATIONAL HARDWOOD MAGAZINE 39