The National Association of Store Fixture Manufacturers asked me to adapt my legacy article for their members. Not only was they concerned about their business niche but wanted to know if legacies were good or bad. They also wanted solutions rather than just problem identification. So here are:

 

Bad Legacies / Good Choices

Inheritances are good: business legacies are bad! Yesterday’s equipment and concepts have limited value and the time spent honoring them can be a costly mistake. Factory legacies typically are combinations of outdated equipment and methods but sometimes are new equipment used with the same old methods. I won’t be polite because this equipment drains your wallet and even worse may drain some blood from your operators. I’ve given them "name tags", not to be cute, but to fix these images in your mind.

Cowboys on horseback. Forklift trucks within production areas are destructive – the least of their problems being when they drop a load. The sole function of forklifts is to deliver material to and from the factory. Roller conveyors throughout the shop are easy medicine to prescribe but may not be suitable for most fixture manufacturers. They add efficiency and discipline and are great for moving material within a machining work-cell (i.e., panel saw, bander and borer) but need to be combined with job carts for process and staging flexibility.

The tenoner from hell. Typically, a forty-year-old Greenlee that still does a great job of trimming and tenoning. It doesn’t cost you a dime in maintenance but it takes twenty minutes rather than twenty seconds for an accurate size change. If setup time discourages its use, either junk it or upgrade it. (Invest less than $10,000 in computerized size control for quick setups with no wasted "trial" panels.) P.S. take a close look at these antiques because the safety switches that keeps someone’s hand from being dragged in under the pressure beam may have been removed a number of years ago).

Twin tearjerkers. Double sided edgebanders. Yes, they double production but with more than double the maintenance and half the quality (especially if the panels were sized on a panelsaw). Two single banders connected by a conveyor are a much better solution that eliminates setup time and quality headaches. If you have only one edgebander, an investment with great payback is a return conveyor. It gets rid of the off-loading helper; so one operator can load, unload and inspect.

Amazing maze. The above floor, pallet type, finishing line that resembles an amusement park ride. It’s no joke to the operators who mess themselves up climbing up and down over the line. These lines are difficult to keep clean (essential for high quality work) and lack the flexibility of independent towline carts, the productivity of monorails, or the lower operating cost of flat line systems.

Amazing mess without a maze. More disheartening are the shops without a finishing conveyor where staining, sanding and topcoating are done in the same booth. The management of these shops just doesn’t understand why they can’t produce top quality products and why productivity is so low. No, you may not need a conveyor or a drying oven, but let’s hear it for common sense; after all you don’t dine in the bathroom.

One arm bandits. Crosscutting lumber with semi-automatic "Hydracut" saws has caused many operators to lose fingers, hands and arms. Replace them with fully guarded up-cut saws. If, for some reason you must use this type of saw, install a safety device requiring the operator to hold down buttons with both hands and activate a lumber hold-down before cutting, The tag of "one arm bandits" also refers to how your operator gambles with lumber yield. Lumber yield and usage patterns have changed dramatically over the past few years. You need today’s equipment and methods to maximize yield and productivity.

Statues and monuments. Sometimes, I see a machine sitting in the middle of a shop gathering dust and have to scrape off two or three years of accumulation just to find out what kind of it is. When I inquire, the staff replies that they used the machine on only one job, but it saved them a fortune. Or, it was the first machine the owner bought. Your business is no place for either inertia or sentimentality. If you haven't used a machine in the last two years, it's time to get rid of it! Your floor space is valuable; besides, you have secondary costs like hooking it up to the dust collector, etc. If the machine is an antique, it belongs in a museum - not in your factory.

Clumsy and clueless. The ultimate putdown from computer hardware and software salesmen is referring to your existing system as a "legacy system". That’s a polite way of saying that although your system does its job; it’s really a dinosaur that just doesn’t know it’s supposed to be dead. Too bad the salesmen didn’t take a closer look at your shop – the dinosaur is already dead and starting to rot. Yes, your system may capture costs – but that is just after the fact: history! You need to synchronize these actual costs with those used for quotations (and then combine them with activity based costing). If not your bids are coming from "Fantasy Island". You also need this same system to be pro-active; interacting with what is really happening on the shop floor – planning production and adjusting schedules to reflect the realities of late material delivery, labor shortages, rejects and machine down-time.

The list goes on… legacy equipment, methods and systems are probably at the heart of your company. Further Investment in such dinosaurs by either maintenance or upgrades just postpones the date of the inevitable heart transplant. No you needn’t run out and replace them today, but you need to tag them "DNR" and plan their replacement with cost-effective solutions that produce quality products.

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