March 2025
Here's my practical advice for pallet companies who want to blaze the trail:
🚀 Invest aggressively in data infrastructure: AI is only as good as the data it learns from. Instrument every aspect of your operations—from lumber receiving to quote conversion rates. Don’t forget your network infrastructure is just as important.
🚀 Hire technical talent and empower them: Find engineers who understand both AI and wood products manufacturing. Put them in positions where they can drive change.
🚀 Create a culture of experimentation: Test new approaches continuously. Expect failures but learn quickly from them.
🚀 Build strategic partnerships: No company can do everything alone. Partner with AI startups, university research labs, and even competitors on pre-competitive technology.
🚀 Focus on your uniquely human advantages: AI will handle pattern recognition and optimization, but your deep industry knowledge, customer relationships, and strategic thinking remain invaluable.
🚀 Reorganize for speed: Traditional hier- archies slow decision-making. Create small, empowered teams focused on specific challenges.
🚀 Develop an AI governance framework: Address questions of data ownership, algorithmic transparency, and ethical use of AI early.
The New Economics
Technology fundamentally changes economic equations, and we’re about to experience this disruption firsthand.
The traditional cost curves in our industry—where scale and efficiency have been paramount—will be rewritten by AI capabilities. Small, AI-enabled companies may achieve cost structures that previously required massive scale. Meanwhile, large companies who effectively deploy AI could see unprecedented efficiencies.
This will create winners and losers. Technology-driven markets tend toward consolidation with a few dominant players capturing disproportionate value. The question is: which category will your company fall into?
Your Leadership Is Imperative
Leadership matters more than ever during these transitions. Your people will look to you not just for direction but for confidence in an uncertain future.
You must become bilingual—fluent in both the language of traditional pallet manufacturing and the emerging vocabulary of AI and Business Analytics. You need technical understanding deep enough to make informed strategic decisions from the data you pull.
Most importantly, you must paint a compelling vision of the future: how AI will make your company more successful, how it will create new opportunities for your employees, and how it will better serve your customers.
We have a proud history of adapting to change — we’re still the dominant species after all. AI represents our next great adaptation, one that could make our industry more efficient, more sustainable, and more valuable than ever before.
The future isn't something that happens to you—it's something you build. Let's build it together.
As Henry Kissinger wisely said, "The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."
Until next time—keep leading, keep inno- vating, and keep Bridging the Gap!
WPM