WoodDigest.com |

Delivering on the question posed by its tagline: “What’s Next?”, the 7th Annual Stiles Executive Briefing Conference, held at the Wyndham Princeton Forrestal Hotel and Conference Center in Princeton, N.J., April 16-18, offered the 130 EBC attendees a taste of new ideas and a clear vision of the future of the wood industry.

The brainchild of Peter Kleinschmidt, CEO and chairman of the board of Stiles Machinery, the EBC’s goal is to create a venue for the wood industry to explore ideas and technology and discover new opportunities in a noncommercial forum. Coordinated and hosted by Stiles Education, the conference’s sessions provided perspectives and information on topics ranging from human resources to biofuel.
In a press conference prior to the start of the event, Kleinschmidt noted the trials of the recent economy: “The time has come to refocus the mindset in our industry away from an unhealthy obsession with low cost labor, a false interpretation of lean processes [an excuse to avoid necessary investment in productive equipment] and the inevitability of business downturns.

“We need to open our eyes and minds to the trends and developments in the rest of the world. European, Asian — and now East European — manufacturers are investing in the latest technologies, high levels of automation and high capacity production systems. Investment in production machinery has increased in virtually all major world markets in 2007 except for the United States.”

Keynote speaker Andrew Winston, co-author of Green to Gold and founder of Winston Eco-Strategies, set the tone for what most attendees already had on their minds.

“The definition of green is wide open,” Winston said at the keynote address. “But its relationship with the wood industry is implemented along the entire value chain, and your impact is made up and down stream.”

A “Focus on Energy Strategies” segment featured alternative fuel authority, Mats Mared, president of Ingenjörsfirman J Mared AB, and Stiles’ technical director Russ Suor. The segment highlighted the various proven technologies used to turn sawdust into resources that can add to a company’s bottom line.

“The keynote speaker Andrew Winston and the information shared by Mats Mared from Sweden illustrated that green is not just good to do or the right thing to do, but it also drives a revenue/profit for your organization when done correctly,” Suor noted. “The key take-away was to reconsider production waste as an energy source to utilize this product rather than just throwing it out.”

Gat Caperton, president and CEO of Caperton Furniture Works, reported: “I was specifically interested in learning more about monetizing wood waste, i.e., biomass, and the options associated with turning scrap to cash.“

Greg O’Connell, sales manager with JB Cutting, agreed: “The segment about wood waste as an energy source was a topic that I found very interesting. The typical U.S. wood shop needs to rethink how we look at waste. We need to adopt to what Europe and other countries have been doing for decades now.”

Compliance concerns are always a top-of-mind issue for woodworkers. John Bradfield, director of environmental affairs for the Composite Panel Association, addressed the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations set for formaldehyde emission limits, and its implications on the wood market. As it relates to his segment, he also noted how potential competition for the wood supply will be determined by the value of wood as an energy source.