Custom residential cabinetmaker

8/14/2019 Custom residential cabinetmaker

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His Life Woodworks neededbetter tools to manage itsfront-end functions, especially

purchasing, job costing and pricing.We make custom residential cabi-

netry, mostly for new construction,

says company president John Johnson.Were large for a custom shop with 52people, so communications is a bigissue. Probably our biggest struggle isgetting design detail information outaccurately.

Johnson does nearly all of the sell-ing, and designs most of the jobs forthe Torrance, Calif., company, whichtypically has as many as 100 jobs inprocess.

Johnson also works with his detail-

ers to package the job together. Thedetailers manage all the shop ques-tions, acting as in-house project man-agers. Johnson would like to get out of the sales side, but doesnt know if thatwill ever happen.

Customers want to talk to the de-signer, the creative person. Most of them know me, he says.

Johnsons ability to visualize and de-velop designs for large custom projectshelps the company get business, but

that custom emphasis creates prob-lems because all of the details have tobe tracked.

Custom woodworking is a progres-sive experience, Johnson says. Itsnever a done deal. The customer is

never done making up his mind.Theres so much freedom to add,change and remove things. The jobhas a different definition here than an-other shop may have.

Sean Henry was writing MaterialsRequirements Planning software forHis Life Woodworks, and identifiedseveral problems. (Henry had his owncompany, worked as an employee of His Life Woodworks for a year, thenformed Master Solutions LLC with

Johnson to develop management soft-ware.) No one understood what a pur-chase order was for, and it was neverused for reference, he says. Also, oneperson ran the accounting system,which was very customized and no oneelse knew how to use it. The labor col-lection system didnt process job datainto a database that everyone couldread. In general, Henry said that eachperson had developed his own methodof doing things, which was unusable

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cabinets

His Life WoodworksTorrance, Calif.

Products: Custom residentialcabinetry

Employees: 52 Sales: $5 million Plant size: 22,000 square feet

p l a n t f a c t s

Custom residentialcabinetmaker usesadvancedmanagement

software to improveoperations and profit.

by Karl D. [email protected]

A new SCM Sigma 65 beam sawwas recently added to the Torrance,Calif., shop. This was the firstpiece of CNC equipment used byHis Life Woodworks.

Breaking downBARRIERSto growthBreaking down


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for everyone else.Henry says that many companiesstart out with a single woodworker andthe business grows beyond his ability tomanage. Smaller companies take onthe personalities of the owner, for goodor bad. The purchasing, accounting,detailing and production people oftendont know what each other is doing.

Making improvementsHis Life Woodworks uses Business-

Master, an operations managementprogram developed jointly by Henryand the company for small- to medi-um-sized manufacturing companies. Itis designed to improve purchasing,order entry, inventory control, produc-tion scheduling, job costing, and laborcollection and payroll.

Henry says that as His Life Wood-works grew, it improved its ability tohandle existing operations. The com-

continued

Purchase orderentry screen in BusinessMaster. Purchasing is seen as thestarting point for improvingmanagement processes.


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pany began distributing the schedulingprocess directly to the productionmanager so the schedule was changedimmediately and accurately. Purchas-ing speed was improved through prop-er use of a database rather thanspreadsheets and forms.

Later, as revenue increased, im-

provements were made in time collec-tion and payroll output functions.Payroll processing time went from twodays to a few hours. Henry wrote a cus-tom estimating program to work withBusinessMaster, eliminating the print-ing of estimates in Microsoft Word.(This will be included as a module infuture versions.) Progressive billing anda connection to the accounting programeliminated typing of invoices and im-proved accounts receivables. (His Life

also uses Cabinet Vision Solid, and Mi-crosoft Excel and Outlook. The integra-tion with Solid and the accountingprogram were seen as major benefits.)

How is improvement measured? Itis total revenue to administrative per-

sonnel, and administrative personnelas a percentage, Henry says. You areable to get more done with fewer ad-ministrative personnel. Sometimes thisis an intangible, because as soon asyou become more efficient, you takeon more work.

Purchasing firstThe first thing we did was pur-chasing, Henry says. Thats the mostlogical place to start because if youmanage purchasing correctly, you getall sorts of ripple effects.

John was selling jobs, I was run-ning the shop, so there were certainthings that were ignored, says GaryBrim, vice president, who overseesproduction. Now we can see the big-ger picture. Were able to review the

years orders and consider more vol-ume buying.After purchasing, scheduling was

targeted. The company now has theability to see the progress and status of each job, broken down week by week,with the amount spent up to that point.

Anyone can pull up the job and seewhere it is, Johnson says. Becausewere so large, thats the biggest chal-lenge. Customers call up and want toknow whats going on with their project.

Henry says the system is designedto be oriented to many uses. Each of the contributing players can put his in-formation in and the net result is thescheduling.

Pricing too lowImplementing the system and get-

ting the controls in place showed ushow low we were pricing our goods, andwhy we werent making any money,Brim says. In the last few months

weve made money like never before be-cause we finally have a handle on whatwere doing. We didnt know how muchwe were underselling ourselves. Wewere able to implement percentage in-creases and were able to get them.

Also, Brim says that they noticed atrend that was not unexpected thestandard frameless cabinets were mod-erately profitable, but the custom work was done at a loss. A month with most-ly standard work was really good, prof-

breaking downbarriers

S ean Henry of Master SolutionsLLC says that many small com-panies share characteristics thatmake improvement difficult.

Roadblocks to successful use ofnew software include:

Kingdoms and a hostage cri- sis. An area needs improvement,but an individual has invested a lotof time or effort into, for example,purchasing or accounting. Themethod worked well when the com-pany was small, but now the entirecompany needs to have the informa-tion for decision making, or the datais not as accurate as it should be.No one else knows how to get to thedata, and the person in this role digsin his heels and will not change.This is what Henry calls a hostagecrisis because the company isbeing held back from profitability bya process or personnel.

Tribal knowledge. In this case,only one person, or a very smallgroup of people (tribe), know how toget at criti cal information, or whatthe information really means.

A very small business mind- set. Key personnel are using process-es or structures they developed whenthe company was just starting out.Now, the company is larger and ittakes a lot of people and effort tokeep the system going. Henry saysthat this often occurs in purchasing.We have walked into companiesdoing $10 million in sales that stillbuy job to job, Henry says. Or thepurchasing agent is the only personwho knows where and what to buy,and he becomes a bottleneck.

Emphasis on production at the expense of business principles.Most shops see adding productioncapacity as the key to growth andprofit. Henry says that few compa-nies plan in advance for the adminis-tration overhead. They find thatprofit growth is not consistent withincreased revenue because theyhave focused on production capaci-ty, not proper business structure. Sothey need a major reworking of thebusiness aspect at a time when theycan least afford it.

Tribes, kingdoms and hostages

Sean Henry at a computer on the shopfloor. Each person keys in the job hesworking on before beginning work.


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it-wise. A month with a lot of customwork was bad. Now they knew why.

Ultimately, you know which jobsyoull lose money on, and you canmake the difficult choice to turn themdown, Brim says. Now we have validinformation to decide whether wewant to do that kind of work any more.

We looked at all the jobs for one con-tractor and we were breaking even onevery job. We finally decided we didntwant to work for him anymore.

Each revision, called a work order,is handled like another job tracked inthe scheduler with a six-digit number.Whether the company made or lostmoney on each item can be deter-mined quickly. The initial job may havebeen profitable, but three or four re-works could have wiped out the profits.

Theres been some valuable infor-mation weve pulled from those work orders and theyve changed some of the processes on the shop floor,Henry says.

Brim says one of the biggest changes

has been standardizing processes. If someone is on vacation, most of usknow how to run the software, he says.If a person is purchasing, we know

continued

His Life Woodworks specializes incustom cabinetry, primarilyresidential, including many wholehomes in southern California. Allwork is custom. Keeping track of jobsin process was a challenge.


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how hes purchasing because theresonly one way to do it. Its not his ownmethod he devised on his own spread-sheet over two or three years.

The standardization also allowedHis Life Woodworks to analyze pro-duction efficiency against similar jobsalready in the database. A certain type

of face frame cabinet job could be

compared with 100 similar jobs, or thewhole 3,000-job database, to identifyareas that need improvement.

Finishing is a selling toolOn the shop floor, solid wood

milling, assembly and finishing arehandled separately. An SCM Sigma 65

beam saw is the newest piece of equip-


Biesse Group AmericaComil Cosmo NK2 case clamp

Biesse Polymac Ergho 5704/357-3131

www.biesseusa.com

E.B. Bradley Co.Hardware

323/585-9201www.ebbradley.com

Cabinet Vision Inc.Cabinet Vision Solid

205/556-9199www.cabinetvision.com

Dec ore-ative Specialties Inc.

Cabinet doors626/254-9494www.decore.com

Delta MachineryTable saws & tilting arbor saw

901/668-8600www.deltamachinery.com

CTD Machines Inc.Cutoff saw

213/689-4455www.ctdsaw.com

For more information on these products visit fdmonline.com or contact the company directly.


6/7FD M / march 2002 4 5

ment. Delta table saws and a tiltingarbor saw and CTD cutoff saw withTigerStop are also used. Most edge-banding is done on a Holz-Her 1408edgebander. Other equipment in theshop includes a Timesavers widebeltsander, J.L. Taylor clamp carrier, Ritterdrawer box assembly clamp and Comil

Cosmo NK2 case clamp. Gary Brim

says the company is considering thepurchase of a router with nesting capa-bilities. (A second shop in the nearbyWilmington section of Los Angelesdoes some work on a contract basis.)

His Life Woodworks has a large fin-ishing area in a second building at itsTorrance location, which Johnson says is

an important selling point because many

companies dont want to finish. A crewcan also do finishing on site if needed.The company was using water-based fin-ishes, but went back to catalyzed varnishwhen the regulations changed.

Finishing in southern California iskey to landing work in slow times, hesays. Finishing has a lot to do with

Holz-Her Inc.Edgebander

704/587-3400www.holzher.com

Master Solutions LLCManagement software

310/874-1176www.mastersolutions.com

Ritter Mfg. Inc.Drawer box assembly clamp

925/757-7296www.rittermfg.com

SCM Group USA Inc.Sigma 65 panel saw

770/813-8818www.scmgroup-usa.com

James L. Taylor Mfg. Co.

Clamp carrier845/452-3780www.jamesltaylor.com

TigerStopMovable fence360/254-0661

www.tigerstop.com

TimesaversWidebelt sander763/537-3611

www.timesaversinc.com

continued

His Life Woodworks does itsown finishing, a major selling

point in southern California.


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our success. We lose money some-times doing it, but we do it well.

His Life Woodworks buys all doorsfinished from Decore-ative Specialties.All hardware inventory is kept in a largemetal storage container outside thebuilding. Distributor E.B. Bradley comesin once a week, fills whichever items are

low and bills His Life Woodworks forwhatever has been used. You get the in-voice, pay it early for the two percentdiscount, you dont have to write 20 pur-chase orders to get the items and younever run short, Henry says.

Software successHenry says the management struc-

ture of a company is as important asthe software tools.

Companies that have a structure

in place, such as a purchasing depart-ment, that use project managers, orhave a strong production manager, willtransition more easily to using themore efficient tools, he says. Compa-nies that are larger, or have little to no

structure will take longer.Bringing tools like this in without

the corresponding disciplines wont getyou much, Henry says. Marry the twotogether, you can take a $5 million shopand have one person doing 98 percentof the selling, design and scheduling.

His Life Woodworks has put every-

thing in place administratively andstructurally, and now its limiting factoris production capacity. The companycould double in size and still have thesame tools; the tools would just havetwice as many jobs in the scheduler.

Henry says hes turned down some jobs where he thought the company did-nt have enough structure. Some othercompanies want to buy a solution to fixeverything in their company, and soft-ware cant do that for you, he says. If it

wont work for a company, we dontwant to sell it. We dont have any cus-tomers that are not using the product.

His Life Woodworks is using theproduct, and expects to continue togrow. v


John Johnson (right) started His LifeWoodworks and serves as president,responsible for much of the sales anddesign work. Sean Henry wrote abusiness management program forthe company that is now in use at 10other firms.

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Custom residential cabinetmaker