Already selling to the biggest lumber manufacturers in North America, Vice President Simon Potvin looks forward to a bigger and brighter future for Comact Equipment Inc. With nearly 400 employees at its five locations in Canada and one in Arkansas, the Saint-Georges, Quebec, Canada-based sawmill equipment manufacturer offers products ranging from basic conveyors to complete, automated product lines for both softwood and hardwood sawmill clients.

“Most companies only offer a single technology,” Potvin says. “We offer products from log merchandising, where the raw logs come in, to the planer mill, where the lumber is being sent to the final user.”

Comact’s full-service capabilities distinguish it from the competition, Potvin says, noting that there are only three other companies worldwide that have Comact’s range of products. “One thing that sets us apart for sure is the fact that we supply the whole system,” he states. “We integrate; we’re not just selling steel or electronics. [Our customers] can buy turnkey from us – a delivery from a single source. And that’s an important factor in today’s work. Customers want to make sure we’re going to deliver.”

Comact’s relationships with its customers also make it unique. Founded in 1924, the company has established strong bonds in the industry. “The sawmill industry is a low- profile business,” Potvin says. “It’s not [glamorous] like electronics. One of the most important factors is the human contact. All the network we have and the history we have are important factors.”

In addition, technology gives Comact an added advantage.

“We offer high-end equipment that really improves the performance of customers’ process [equipment],” Potvin continues. However, technology takes a back seat for Comact. “If you don’t have good relationships with your customers and if you don’t have the confidence built, technology becomes an unimportant factor,” he adds.

A Perfect Grading
GradExpert is an example of Comact’s innovation. Launched two years ago, the optimization hardware and software performs full lumber grading. People usually grade lumber, he says, and this increases the chance for errors.

“You can double the value of a piece of lumber by grading it correctly,” he explains. “GradExpert removes the mess. Some of our customers deliver to Home Depot and Lowe’s in the United States. And since [these stores] are selling directly to consumer market, they want to have each and every piece of lumber in the pack to be perfect. For thesecustomers and a lot of others, the GradExpert has been a very good machine.”

To date, Comact has manufactured 22 GradExpert systems for companies in North America.

Keeping Up with Challenges
With the weak dollar of the last couple of years, Potvin says Comact and its customers face some challenges. “To keep selling equipment into the United States with the flat rate is a challenge,” he explains. “Our main customer base in Canada is also impacted by that. And it becomes an issue; we have to be very competitive.”

Potvin says Comact practices lean manufacturing through the kaizen approach to gain productivity and flexibility.

In addition, Comact is also impacted by the challenges in the lumber industry. The slow residential market in the United States has slowed down the business, Potvin notes. “That basically shut down the lumber industry,” he states. “It brought the price of lumber down and a lot of facilities shut down to control inventory.”

Comact went from performing four to five major projects – along with a few small ones – per year, to completing fewer projects today. “A lot of our customers today are just doing small improvements, retrofits, little stuff in the mills,” Potvin explains. “It takes a lot of discipline and follow-up to handle all these smaller high-risk projects.

Through Internet communication tools and established project management process and risk analysis, we’ve been able to deal with these project and became very good at it.”

Aiming to be the Best
Potvin says he sees opportunities as Comact prepares for growth. “We want to implement a new information system where we can share all the operations data throughout the company,” he states.

“And this is one of our biggest challenges in the next 18 months.”

Additionally, Comact is also looking to pursue business partnerships in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, “so we could deliver a little bit of our equipment into other parts of the world,” Potvin says. Comact already has agreements in South America.

“These are the challenges in front of us to keep improving our company,” Potvin notes. “We want to be the world leader in sawmill technology. That’s where we want to be and that’s what we’ve been working for every day.”