Josie Knapp and her family
“There is so much innovation happening in our sawmills.” Josie Knapp says. She is currently working on designing an App using RFID tags to store GPS locations so finished product can be located more easily. Josie graduated from the University of Idaho in 2016 with a degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering. She grew up in Clarkston, surrounded by agriculture, which was a major contributor to her degree choice and where she hoped to live after college. When she started job searching before graduation, she learned about Idaho Forest Group through a friend whose mother-in-law worked in Human Resources. She had not heard of IFG before but gave Grangeville a call and went for a mill tour.
“When I arrived at the sawmill, I was expecting it to be like the old-style mills but when I toured, I was so impressed by the technology and machinery running in the sawmill.” She started in June after graduation under project management at IFG Grangeville, where she worked scoping out improvement projects for the mill and in production analysis.
One of her favorite innovative projects as an Engineer in Grangeville, was redesigning the log yard sprinkler systems. The previous method was to walk the log decks, moving around regular sprinklers but after they completed this project, water cannons took care of watering the log decks. She said, “I liked that I got to see this project through from start to finish.” Safety of our employees is huge and thanks to the team’s work, this project made watering the log decks safer for our log yard staff in Grangeville. Josie says she likes working for IFG, “because they invest in their employees, improvements for the mills, and support the surrounding communities!”
Recently, Josie and her husband Kyle had a baby girl, Halle Knapp. After her 3 months of maternity leave Josie transitioned to working for the IT department from home. Her new title is Production Analyst. Currently, she is working on designing an App that will be used by those working with finished inventory. The goal is to more efficiently locate units, improve finished product rotation, and reduce the time needed for yard inventory.
“This app is just the start of what may be possible in the future. With the ability to have GPS data linked to tags, it could eventually allow us to track product from start to finish throughout all of our processes!”
