For hundreds of years, inventors have set out to build a better mousetrap. But the fact is, in the old days there were really only so many ways to catch a mouse. These days, the age of high technology has broadened the possibilities for entrepreneurs almost immeasurably. For a generation of innovative thinkers who grew up with computers, it’s been a matter of matching the brilliant idea with the right technology—and, sometimes, waiting for the technology to catch up to the idea.
Joey Nelson is a perfect example of the latest wave of creative thinkers who looked around them, saw a way to improve on something, and then put their brains and today’s technology to work to make it happen. His company, JoeScan, makes laser scanners that improve efficiency in many different aspects of mill operations. And it all started with the kind of youthful determination that powers so many technological advancements.
Two relevant factors were at work early in Nelson’s life. First, his father owned a small engineering business that served the timber industry. And he grew up in the very early years of personal computers.
“Yes, I had a Commodore 64,” he admits. “I learned BASIC and was able to program it to ask ‘What is your name?’ and wrote some simple computer games.” He even got involved in BBSes, pre-Internet online social communities for computer enthusiasts, when he was 13 years old.
As he was growing up, he had that natural interest boys have in what their fathers do. He was exposed to the idea of a small business as his father Rod formed and operated Nelson Brothers Engineering (NBE). “Small business ownership was normal to me,” Joey Nelson says. “I also got to know the sawmill industry, and its quirks.”
In college, after he shifted his emphasis from liberal arts to electronic engineering (“Not a lot of jobs in corporate philosophy”), he took an even stronger interest in his father’s business—at a fortuitous time.
“Rod was trying to build a laser scanner for sawmills, but he couldn’t find off-the-shelf components to use,” Nelson explains. “I was helping him out so he could save money on development, and I ended up doing almost the entire design for the L-51 scanner. That was a lot of fun, having the idea, designing it, then finding the problems and fixing them, working at it until we got it right.”
So much fun, in fact, that it planted the seeds for JoeScan. After collaborating with several of his college professors on a security software startup, where he learned the basics of business – “Why are we building this, and who will buy it?” – and how to work with a team developing software, Nelson decided he could take what he had learned and put it to use making laser scanners. He had already worked on a partial design, based on what he learned working on the L-51 for NBE. He sensed through his knowledge of the sawmill industry that there was a market for it.
NBE was making its own scanners by then, but although they were successful, Nelson felt they were already outdated. “NBE wasn’t planning on designing a new one, so it gave me a clear path to design my own,” he says. “I knew NBE and other vendors would continue to need affordable and reliable scanning, so a better and simpler product could work well.”
His concept was to use standard TCP/IP networking and simple Ethernet cabling for communications—a rare configuration at the time—for lineal board, cant and log scanning applications. His logic was that if optimization vendors could offer mills proven, reliable scanning components, the vendors could focus more on their optimization software and help mills increase their efficiency and bottom line.
So Nelson formed JoeScan in Pullman, Wash., and he and original employee Ryan Phelps built the first JS-20 scanner in 2002. It didn’t involve a brand new idea, but it came along at the right time. “The fundamental concept of scanning—a laser and a camera—dates back to the ’70s,” Nelson says. “But there wasn’t the computer power available to process the data; the technology was conceived before its time. By the time we designed the JS-20, the technology behind scanning was simpler, more robust and more affordable.”
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RELATIONSHIPS
With a better mousetrap in hand, Nelson thought the world would beat a path to his door. Well, that’s not exactly what he expected, but he definitely underestimated the amount of effort necessary to bring customers on board.
“Originally I thought it would be a lot easier to get other vendors to buy and sell our scanners,” he says. “Since then I’ve learned that there’s a natural conservatism toward new companies. If you’ve only been around a couple years, there’s a real question of if you have a sustainable business model. We had to establish ourselves and our company.”
Nelson poured energy into the basics of building a company and forming relationships. Scanners were a critical component of optimization systems, which sawmills bought from systems integrators. So Nelson started talking with the integrators—one-on-one—about the issues they needed solved and what exactly they were looking for. Once he got some scanners installed, he found the key was to have people available for on-site support, to make startups as smooth as possible.
“We knew that the early relationships we formed would develop into valuable long-term relationships,” he says. “We were willing to lose money on our first installations if they would help cement those relationships.”
JoeScan scanners found success in the systems of the mills that bought them, and over time the company forged strong ties with optimization vendors such as Autolog and MPM, and machinery manufacturers including TMT, R2S, Salem Equipment and Turner Engineering. But of course that initial success was just the beginning of the story. Nelson had a good product, a market that needed the product, and some relationships in the sales channel. All that meant nothing if JoeScan didn’t continue to refine and innovate. Because the flip side of the high-tech age is that what you did today may not be good enough tomorrow; advancements come too fast. So Nelson began forming his long-term philosophy and strategies.
“First of all, you must have top-notch people—engineers who can solve problems and get things done, not just theorize,” he says. “And then we adopted a philosophy of exploiting standard development platforms—Verilog for hardware design, and C++ and Linux for software—so we can take a design and meld it with new technology with less effort. For example, the design costs for our new X-Series platform were much lower because we could re-use much of our previous work done using portable standards.”
NEW PRODUCTS
JoeScan has made a concerted effort to keep up with the technology and performance curve. The first JS-20 scanner, while simple and effective for its time, had performance limitations and was not easy for new vendors to integrate. A year after introducing the first JS-20, and after moving the business to its current location in downtown Vancouver, Wash., they released a firmware update that made the scanners easier to install as well as increased the maximum scan rate (from 90/sec. to 190/sec.) and provided better diagnostic tools. Next, in 2005, came an in-house calibration system that improved the ease and accuracy of field calibration. Then came the expansion into multiple lasers in one scanner housing.
 “We had hit a cost point where systems could use our scanners for snapshot applications, but it wasn’t really affordable for less than 2-foot spacing between lasers for most systems,” Nelson explains. “Using two lasers allows double the scan density for just 10 percent more cost. Our dual-laser model is very competitive in the snapshot scanning market.”
The next challenge addressed was transverse scanning, which had historically been expensive as well as prone to poor scan coverage. Most available scanners left gaps of as much as three inches between profiles. In addition, existing scanners had difficulty producing good data on steep wane and square edges. In 2008, JoeScan introduced the X-Series, a line of five new scanner models that includes a wide-angle model that vastly improves what’s possible in transverse scanning, as well as a triple-laser model for snapshot scans on 6 in. spacing.
“Our focus is always on expanding the capabilities of our scanners while maintaining the quality assurance we’ve become known for,” Nelson says about the new lineup. “We want to continue expanding into new applications, like smaller systems that can use scanning to solve a specific problem, and the technology and electronics of our new X-Series models allow that.”
As an example, Automation Electronics in New Zealand built a log tally system using JoeScan scanners; knowing the volume of logs going into the mill helps their accounting. And EB Associates, based in Enumclaw, Wash., has started using JoeScan scanners in some of its SizeCheck automatic lumber size monitoring products. All in all, JoeScan reports that roughly 60 mills worldwide, both hardwood and softwood, are using its scan heads.
The key to growing success? “Quality and reliability, those are imperatives,” Nelson says. “That’s how we’ve built our business. And the refinements we’ve made to the core technology help us across all our products, developing economies of scale that allow higher quality without increased costs as we expand into more applications.”
Looking ahead after six years in business and enough growth to expand his workforce to six employees, Nelson knows now that he was on target with his early philosophy and its emphasis as much on relationships as products.
“The success we’ve had is a lot about customer relationships—being in tune and listening to them,” he says. “Many of our competitors have focused on high-end scanners, but we found that most customers want mainstream scanning products that are simpler, more reliable, and give more bang for their buck.”
That’s how Nelson sees the future of sawmill scanning, too. He partially agrees with those who think geometric scanning is reaching a point of diminishing returns. More and more, inaccurate machinery is the limiting factor. But even in machinery-limited systems, he thinks simpler, more reliable and less expensive scanners—like the ones his company builds—are needed for mills to stay competitive.
“As geometric scanning becomes easier and more cost-effective to use, I see the technology becoming pervasive in the mills,” Nelson says. “Optimization scanning will be just one part of a far larger market for geometric scanning devices.”
Jim Moore is with Word Jones, Portland, Ore., jim@wordjones.com. Contact JoeScan at 360-993-0069; e-mail: sales@joescan.com; web: joescan.com
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