I remember touring the lumber yard at Denoon Lumber in Bergholz, Ohio. That was when it really occurred to me and sunk in. The passing of years has only reinforced the concept to me.
Manufacturing is high tech.
Denoon's yard in Bergholz is 40+ miles away from the closet interstate highway. Their raw material is hardwood trees cut from the woods of Eastern Ohio. Their out-product is cut timber loaded on a truck.
Let's just be honest. Rural Bergholz and timber yards are not places that evoke high tech anything.
Yet, I watched a yard worker standing on a rolling log with a headset on. He was both talking and listening. At the other end was a computer, though, not a person.
The computer was taking the weight of the log, input from laser-guided controls, and the grader's verbal grading of the log all in to sort out where to load a log and when to stop loading a truckload.
Voice recognition technology was in use. Lasers were in use.
That was 1996. Yes, 16 years ago.
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