3 Kitchens or Those Who Teach Must Do.
No Pictures? Originally published in Wood & Wood Products, this article is more about process and industry evolution rather than kitchen design. To liven it up for our website and to get your attention here is a photo of our latest.
That’s right. I
owe you, as well as all my other kitchen cabinet industry friends, an
apology because I didn’t install your stock cabinets in my
new condo. I also apologize to my furniture clients because I’ve often said
that the rising cost of good cabinets would drive me to nail dining room
furniture to the kitchen wall. The reaction of your competitors when they
visited would only be a small part of
the problem, the real issue is that you guys just aren’t making
what my wife wants - a functional, easy
to maintain kitchen that also has drop-dead modern styling and is perfectly
sized for her. Yes, there are some fine
quality custom shops that could possibly meet her needs but nothing mass-produced. More important, building kitchens has always
been a kind of proving ground for me; an opportunity to explore new materials
and manufacturing concepts. It is also
a reminder of shop-floor triumphs and mistakes every morning that I have
breakfast at home.
I’ve built three kitchens – the first about thirty years ago. It
was a year of weekend long love-hate affairs with a tablesaw. Brazilian walnut butcher-block tops, drawers
big and strong enough for toddlers to hide in, inset doors with piano hinges,
textured plastic laminate doors --- nothing like the traditional oak face frame
cabinets that were in most homes then. Going it alone gave me many hours to
hone woodworking techniques and close calls made me to reflect on the safety
lessons I preached to my clients.
Doing it myself gave me time
to reflect on “economics of scale” issues in cabinet manufacturing. Back in the
‘70s, it helped me to understand the potential of the small niche manufacturer
using frameless (32 mm) construction. The complete kitchen building work-cell
of a sliding table saw, edge bander and boring machine was indeed viable. I
was tempted to give up the
wonderful days away from home as a consultant and go into business myself but
the reality check was that efficient manufacturing (methods, flow and systems) is what ensures a mature
company’s survival: initial growth and large scale profitability are based on
marketing and design.
My second kitchen was
engineered and installed by me. (After
Sheila got bruised in helping install the upper cabinets – she got a doctor’s
note prescribing absence during
installation.) The actual construction
was by a recent immigrant who was a
furniture samplemaker. It was a barter deal; his boss wanted him to learn cabinet construction and
I wanted not to get involved in another long drawn
out do-it myself project. He had seen
few American kitchens and had no
knowledge of their construction. But furniture
building was his strong point and together we dived into melding
traditional furniture construction with
the then new to him 32mm construction. His English was almost non-existent but
he knew the one word question: “Why?” I spent many hours drawing alternate
cabinet and furniture construction details in reply. Together we built a great
looking contemporary kitchen and at the same time explored building the next
generation of furniture with frameless cabinet technology. What we were seeking and found were
techniques to eliminate long setup times and innovative machining concepts that reduced assembly time and subsequent sanding and up-fitting labor.
This was over a dozen years ago; the kitchen is still in great shape and many
of the lessons learned have been passed on to other clients.
By the time the second
kitchen was built, the work-cell had
become a common manufacturing strategy for small fixture and kitchen cabinet
companies. Its success was driven by
the availability of pre-laminated panels
but more so by increasing
consumer acceptance of frameless
construction. What made this
palatable to many consumers was the availability of a wide range of wood door
materials and styles. The small shops
discovered the joy of outsourcing; sell yourself, build boxes and buy
prefinished doors. The concept brought them happiness and three meals a
day. However, barriers raised by economics-of-scale
prevented them from eating larger producers’ lunches. The same work-cell concepts that
were introduced in their factories but rather than table saws the larger
factories had panel saws capable of cutting ten panels at a time, feed through borers
and sophisticated edge banders. The
work-cell concept reduced transit effort and time between operations but its
success depended on sophisticated information systems to control the shop
floor. Waiting to report what was cut
and then waiting overnight for instructions on what to band demanded instead
real-time systems. Successful companies
understood that equipment must be supported by material handling equipment,
systems and of course by a trained and motivated staff.
.
Now it’s time for another kitchen
– and another approach. A fairly small
kitchen for our new condo. I went into
sticker shock when I saw what high end products were being sold for and then after sketching out our needs I tried to lay
it out in a kitchen cabinet program. It wouldn’t compute: too many columns and
pipes interfering with the layout made stock cabinets impossible. I then
drafted the cabinets in Autocad
and sent it to our own manufacturing software (SIM*plicity) for bills of
material and costing. The output was one
line: “You can’t afford it, you don’t have the time to do it, and you don’t have the patience to build
it”. I kicked the computer and inputted
the magic words: “ Sheila wants
it”. The computer’s response was
instantaneous “Get Randy”. Randy is a
perfectionist who works, when he has to, at a dead slow speed. After explaining the project, he agreed
with two minor conditions: he wouldn’t cut the panels nor would he do the
doors. “ I don’t do doors – they are
too much work”.
When Randy arrived, his first
question was: “Where are the cut parts?”
I said: “No problem”, and after
we reviewed the drawings, pushed a few keys on my computer and transmitted the
cutting bill to a nearby store fixture client’s panel saw. Randy got a pickup
truckload of parts, each labeled with its size and use. He
fitted these parts around the
obstructions, assembled the cabinets, did some super laminating, and rode off into the sunset.
Who built the kitchen? The sawyer who cut the panels? Randy who
assembled them? Myself as designer and project leader? Or even our computer system which paced the
project and warned of inadequacies of skill, time and budget? We all did, it was a team effort! I no longer need to prove myself a
do-it-yourself purist and was glad to
have skilled help - golden hands and high tech equipment. Spending
hours cutting parts on a table saw which can be cut in minutes on the panel saw is an exercise in futility. I’d rather take pride myself in being Randy’s mentor and for laying-out the factory
that cut the panels.
Kitchen cabinets are
relatively simple. (I know; my first
boss forced me to build my own solid wood furniture so that I would understand
the realities of the shop floor.) The
panel saw’s speed didn’t revolutionize
kitchen manufacturing, it was the saw’s accuracy (repeatability and
squareness) which made it possible to simplify the assembly process. Profitably building furniture today in an environment of just-in-time, regional manufacturing and
self contained work cells is a lot more
challenging. However, the potential for downstream savings in furniture manufacturing can be
the true measure of many
mechanization projects. Accurate
machining that eliminates hand-fitting and sanding (or better yet, allows the use of prefinished parts), component identification, and the ability to give clear instructions
to the factory floor are all important elements in effective manufacturing.
The second kitchen still looks new because of the materials and construction I used and because Sheila’s favorite appliance is the telephone to make reservations. However when she does cook it is with love and therefore I had to respond with super kitchen #3. I’d tell you more but I have to get back to hand scraping the edge bands on the doors. (I promised to complete the project this century.)
© 2000 by Feldman Engineering Corporation. All rights reserved. Updated March 24, 2007.
Feldman Engineering identifies and transfers appropriate technology to make your factory more efficient. SIM*plicity is our software. Development, installation, customization and support from a single source! Please contact us at FEC Software Services (email link) for details or to obtain a free single-user SIM*plicity system.
For information about factory layout, manufacturing methods or systems contact
FEC Consulting Services( emai