The lumberyard of the future
It’s the year 2025.
Do you know where your lumberyard is?
Imagine this. You’re on your way to work in the lumberyard of the future.
As your car pulls into the Future Lumber and Building Consultant Co. parking lot, you pass rows and rows of solar electricity panels powering the facility. The acreage for the alternative-energy field became available in the year 2020, when Future Lumber’s high-tech inventory forecasting software went live.
As you walk through the expanded showroom, lit partially by the glowing screens of interactive virtual-reality machines, you take your usual seat in the paperless “consultation area.”
You power up your company-issued tablet computer/mobile payment center. Your scheduled meetings are lined up in your virtual cue — all technology vendors selling solutions to emerging computer viruses and security threats.
An email alarm alerts you to an intruder in the lumberyard’s home construction and storage facility — co-owned by State Builders Inc. The video screen on your smartphone shows the intruder is merely one of the new, human-shaped materials-handling robots that wandered too far from his station.
Of course, there is no guarantee that any of the above scenarios are going to play out in the year 2025. But each of the above (except for the human-shaped robot) reflects a theory put forth recently by a variety of lumberyard operators, vendors and suppliers interviewed by HCN.
Many of the common ideas and predictions found here and on the following pages are based on the following major themes:
Developments in communications will occur with increasing frequency;
The relationship between the pro dealer and the pro builder will grow closer, including consulting and value-added manufacturing services;
The drive for efficiency will push yards to unseen levels of inventory control; and
The pro dealer will play an increased role in reaching homeowners, including female homeowners.
Many of the executives who shared their thoughts with HCN agreed that even if you don’t get all the details right, it’s never a bad thing to think about the future.
One company that embraces that way of thinking is Green Bay, Wisconsin-based US LBM, an 80-plus-unit family of pro dealers in 12 states. One of the futuristic concepts that CEO L.T. Gibson has hatched for his team’s constructive consideration is a lumberyard of the future with no trucks and no inventory.
“It may seem completely unachievable, but that’s kind of the way he challenges us to think outside of the box,” said Randy Aardema, executive VP supply chain for US LBM. “The first step is to think about the unachievable, and then see how in the heck you can get there.”
On the inventory side of the vision, Aardema points to the example of McDonald’s, a company where inventory flows, rather than sits, and where burgers are sold before they are paid for.
“So, if we create a supply chain that is so efficient that lumber and building materials move from our vendors directly to the construction site in less than payment terms — say less than 30 days — then, in essence, you have a lumberyard with no inventory on the books,” Aardema said.
Of course, in such a scenario a yard still has racks and racks of lumber. As a concept, complete elimination of inventory remains “a bit of a stretch,” Aardema said. But expect a lot of inventory to disappear, he said, as lumberyards get better at managing the variability in supply and demand. That improvement in inventory control, he expects, will come from that ability to better forecast the needs of the builder, and better understand the delivery of materials from the supplier or manufacturer.
The more difficult challenge for the futurist is envisioning the yard with no trucks. “I would not say we would be delivering one board at a time to a job site with drones,” Aar-dema said. “But I think trucks may look a lot different in the future.”
Several industry leaders pointed out that futuristic drones — the kind being hoisted upon the public imagination by engineers at Amazon.com — cannot carry a bundle of lumber, and that delivery by truck from staging area to job site may be with us for a long time to come.
“There could be a very elegant information exchange, but there is no elegant way to move thousands of pounds of material that last mile, other than the traditional methods. That’s the real challenge,” said David Helmers, director of business development for Weyerhaeuser Distribution.
Another thing to consider about the future, he said, is that the year 2025 is not that far away. “Traditionally, to truly adopt an innovation in the building materials space , it takes about seven to 10 years,” Helmers said. “For an innovation to be adopted in 2025, it needs to be introduced in the next three years.”
The big change he foresees in lumberyards of the future is the way in which they interact with the customer, providing services and consulting in ways not previously imagined.
“Increasingly important will be [the pro dealer’s> ability to teach and help the contractor,” Helmers said. “And to be able to do that, you have to have the ability to learn. It’s not just bringing in new products; it’s explaining how they bring improvements. And that’s a big change.”
Some executives say they see a glimpse of the future in the lumberyards of today. Helmers pointed to the combination robust hardware store, showroom and drive-through lumberyard format of California-based Ganahl Lumber — effectively becoming a one-stop shop for the homeowner and home builder. He also pointed to the example of Atlanta-based BMC’s “Design Center” and its upstream value engineering services as hints of what’s to come.
At Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Do it Best Corp., Gary Nackers, VP lumber and building materials, sees forward thinking on display at Your Building Centers, a 14-unit pro dealer based in Pennsylvania, where showrooms are available on a 24-7 basis, and Friedmans Home Improvement of California, which brings building products into a female-friendly retail setting. “The female who’s involved in the design of the house will play a bigger role in material decisions,” he suggested.
But perhaps the biggest change will be the way lumberyards adjust to social and technological changes of consumers. Nackers pointed to a stat, which suggests that 90% of “digital natives” (less than 30 years old) say their smartphone never leaves their side. The implications for marketing, communicating, buying and selling are huge.
“What’s changing with some of the more sophisticated yards is the tracking of their deliveries and the communication with their customers,” Nackers said. “The industry has not been very quick to embrace technology, but it certainly is coming, and it is coming at a pretty fast pace.”
