Shop
Succeeds in Seamless Manufacturing
Island Precision Cabinets has accomplished
what few American shops have been able to do — create a truly
integrated, seamless manufacturing environment
Island
Precision Cabinets uses prefinished panelsto build its commercial casework. A
recent job includes a home economics lab for a school in Victoria. Vancouver
Island, Canada.
BY JEAN HYLAND
‘IF
IT AIN’T broke, don’t fix it,’ conventional wisdom tells us. But sometimes
conventional wisdom is best ignored when a product or process can be improved
upon —even ~f that requires rip-
- ping everything apart to make it whole again. Such was
the case with Island Precision Cabinets Ltd., in Saanichton, British Columbia.
Over the years this commercial cabinet shop had added a panel saw, edgebander, and computerized boring machine, and purchased cutlist and optimizing software to speed production, improve quality, and reduce labor times. Management also had begun developing ways to automate and speed the company’s estimating process.
Owner
Brian Timothy was amassing the right elements to bring the plant into the 21st
century, but he lacked the common thread to cohesively tie this technology
together. Although the boring machine was linked to the front office, nothing
else was. Timothy envisioned greater things for his 12-man factory.
So,
three years ago he took a hold step and completely reengineered the
9,500-square-foot plant. He updated and enhanced the software, added all new
state-of-the-art equipment and a conveyor system, built a mezzanine to free
floor space, and made a firm commitment to seamlessly integrate the entire
process, from estimating to assembly.
“In
a very short period of time we basically took our plant apart and put it back
together again,” Timothy says. “As soon as we did, we saw a 25 percent
reduction in labor.”
“We’ve
always been progressive, Timothy adds, “but this was a major change for us. It
involved tying all the elements of the manufacturing process together.”
That’s progress
Today
Island Precision is as technologically sophisticated as shops 10 times its
size should be, but often aren’t. A mixture of Pattern Systems software and
in-house-designed estimating software fully links the front officeto the CNC
equipment on the shop floor. Add to that a unique color-coded and bar-coded
product routing system, state-of-the-art material handling conveyors and lifts,
and JIT manufacturing techniques, and you have a small shop that effortlessly
pumps out (Canadian)$3.8 million a year in sales.
Front-end Automation
Cutlists for panels
machined on this Selco panel saw are downloaded directly from the front office.
“We
can get a fair amount of work through in a short period of time,” Timothy says.
Sophisticated equipment, however, isn’t worth much if there aren’t enough jobs
to keep it running. That’s why Timothy says the shop has become so dependent on
the front office.
To
save time in the front end, Timothy, along with Axel Wagner, operations
manager, and Dean Crawford, programmers, wrote their own takeoff software,
called Take Off. It speeds estimating.
This
latest estimating software wasn’t the shop’s first attempt at automating
estimating. As early as 1986 it had developed an estimating program in an obscure
spreadsheet program called Words and Figures. “That program worked well and was
10 times faster than doing it manually,” Timothy says. Then, developed another
estimating program in Fox Pro. Now, after three years in development and written entirely from scratch — the
Take Off estimating software moves the shop into a new dimension.
The
shop’s success now is based more on estimating. It’s bidding on and winning
more commercial projects in the area. Using the Take Off software, the shop
produces three times as many bids as it could when it used its Fox Pro estimating program. “We can estimate
more quickly and accurately, and manage the data,” Timothy says.
Effortless link
Island Precision
bought this Biesse boring machine with a few extra features it could grow into,
such as an automatic five-tool changer.
Boring instructions are downloaded from Pattern Systems’ Drill-Mate software.
Once
a job is awarded, the shop now can reuse its estimating data to manufacture its
product. The actual estimate data can be exported and downloaded automatically
into Pattern Systems’ Product Planner software. Timothy says this capability
eliminates chance to miscommunicate data between estimating and engineering
the.
After
a job has been downloaded from Take Off into Pattern Systems’ Product Planner,
cutlists are developed and jobs optimized. Drill-Mate software, also from
Pattern Systems, generates boring instructions that can be downloaded
directly to the shop floor.
Although
many shops have difficulty automatically linking manufacturing software to
CNC equipment on the shop floor, Island Precision Cabinets has managed to make it all work
seamlessly.
Completed
cutlists are downloaded directly from the front office to a PC linked to the
Selco WN 200 panel saw. Wagner chose to have the cutlists downloaded
to a separate PC because it’s faster than using the saw controller, and it enables them
to use the PC for other functions at the saw. For example, to diagnose problems
more quickly at the saw, the shop loaded the saw’s manual onto the PC. Now the
operator can turn to the online manual immediately instead of searching for
the hard copy.
To
route projects through the plant, Timothy broke the plant into easily
identifiable color groups, and then developed a color-coded routing system.
For each job, the engineering department generates a color-coded label
containing the sequence of operations, cut dimensions, part name, project
identifier, program number, and banding color
— all
in the color appropriate to the machining operation in the plant. With this
system, there’s never any doubt where a project should be routed next.
For
each operation in the plant, the shop also uses a time-tracking system called
Data Minder. Employees must log in to the system before beginning a new
cutting, edging, drilling, handling, or assembly project. This system provides
valuable feedback, giving the shop an accurate time per part per cutting figure
to compare the cost of a phase of an actual run to the estimate.
To
keep material flowing smoothly and quickly through the plant, the shop
installed a series of roller conveyors and lifts. “There’s no use having a lot
of productive equipment if you have no way of moving it around,”
Timothy says. “Most plants do nothing with material handling.”
From
the saw, parts are banded on a Holz-Her 1447 edgebander, then bored on a Biesse
Rover 342 machining center equipped with an automatic five-spindle tool
changer.
Panels are moved effortlessly through
the plant and to the second floor mezzanine on a series of roller conveyors
and lifts.
Run with it
Pattern
Systems’ Drill-Mate software interfaces with the Biesse Rover machining center
to produce boring instructions for the parts. All of this is
completed in the front office. Machine operators do no programming; they
simply punch in the project number and run with it.
The
shop has been pleased with its Pattern Systems software, especially
Drill-Mare. “Drill-Mate is the most unrecognized package on the market,”
Timothy says. “It’s the one thing that sets Pattern Systems apart from all the
other packages our there.”
Timothy
says Drill-Mate handles the problems it encounters with nonstandard case dimensions, something
other packages can’t always do. “Drill-Mate takes care of that link for a
company like ours,” he says. “It ties a lot of elements together.”
“The
beauty of Drill-Mate,” adds Wagner, “is that as we change our product, it changes with it. We don’t have
to remake everything.” He adds, “Not only is the product designed
parametrically, but we can do it all up front. A lot of people reprogram the controller
through parametrics, but they do it at the machine. The key is to do it up front so the
operator is running the machine as opposed to spending 80 percent of the
time programming and setting it up.”
From
the boring machine, parts take a quick ride on a lift to the second floor
mezzanine for sorting and hardware. Parts then are transported back down,
assembled, wrapped, and loaded onto a waiting 45-foot trailer.
Completed
jobs rarely come to a stop before being loaded onto trucks. “We like to make it
and ship it our the door. That’s throughput,” Timothy says. “That’s what our
whole shop is
based on. Throughput and eliminating
bottlenecks.”
The
conveyors were a key element in making the shop’s JIT manufacturing techniques
work. “There s no value in cutting eight or 10 lifts a day if you can’t move
the parts out afterward,” Wagner says. “We looked at the plant as a solely
integrated process from unloading panels from the trucks, to moving material
through the plant, to shipping it out the door. Everything’s integrated.”
Timothy
learned a bit about throughput and bottlenecks through hooks he read. But some
of his basic management and manufacturing techniques were ingrained in him
early in his career. He once worked at a high-end casework shop owned and run
by Germans,
“The
Germans opened my eyes about how you do things well, and do them quickly.”
Aside from being simply great tradesmen, the Germans also had great systems in
place, Timothy says. “You could see how much you can accomplish if you have
both of those things.”
Knowing that 3 mm PVC edgebanding was becoming more
popular, the shop made sure its edgebander could handle it. This Holz-Her
edge-bander features radiusing, heating. buffing, and scraping stations.
Seamless Shop
Perhaps
because of this early influence, Timothy’s shop operates more like a European
plant than most North American plants. The shop is immaculately clean and well
lit, and employees wear neartly pressed khaki jumpsuits. Conveyors transport
work in process efficiently and quickly from station to station and out the
door. And, most importantly, software links this process together.
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