So, what’s new at HWI?

So, what’s new at HWI?  Let me answer that for you!  In the last month we have hired two new employees to work in the shop.  This will help us manufacture more smoothly without the production workers having to skip around to multiple machines and positions too much during the day.  The second thing that happened is we took a lot of COVID-19 tests!  One of our employees picked up the virus which made the rest of the employees need to get tested, thankfully everyone’s test came back negative.  The third thing was looking for our one-sided 1-1/8” particle board material we use on our plastic laminate countertops.  Wood mills are so backed up that specialty products like this get the lowest priority and many mills are simply denying and not taking on any new orders.  This is frustrating, to be polite, but just another challenge that we must work through, although the problem has been solved now, and hopefully nothing changes!  And the last thing that happened in December is that we sold one of our machines that has been slowly pushed out of our production line due to better machines and technology being brought in and introduced to our shop.  Demand for machines like this has increased in the last two years, due to less machines being available and lead times on machines that are available being extended by weeks and even months in some cases.