By using faxes to take most orders, the company makes it easy for customers to place orders. Once the order is in, the work is scheduled. Door Lister software is used to develop the information the shop needs to build what's required. Then, an acknowledgment of the order, including pricing, is faxed back to the customer. Once confirmation is received, Sheehan says production begins the very next day.

Rather than buying doors and drawers for his cabinets, he decided to become a manufacturer of doors and drawers for other small shops. Building on his experience of being a cabinetmaker since he was 17 years old, Sheehan launched Columbia Wood Products in Kent, Wash., emphasizing solid-wood doors to meet the needs of small woodworking shops. After half a dozen years of steady growth, Sheehan now has 20 workers, including a small second shift, to keep up with the demand. But besides capitalizing on a growing trend, and market, Sheehan's success has a lot to do with a solid common sense business attitude that mixes equal parts of attention to the details of customer service, efficient production and effectively targeted sales and marketing.

Service sells
Columbia Wood Products is in a competitive market, but Sheehan says there are several things that give him an edge. His understanding of the customers, for one, is based on his own experience. "It's a cabinetmaker delivering to a cabinetmaker," he says. The emphasis is on service and quality, but Sheehan also doesn't shy away from custom and specialty work. In fact, he has one person in his shop dedicated to specialty work that doesn't fit neatly into regular production. Attention to what the customer wants begins in the front office, where Sheehan's wife, Kerri, has recently joined the team after a 17- year career in sales in the food service industry. "Every shop has their own way of doing things," says Kerri. "We have to understand their way of doing business, and they expect us to know."

Much of the business they do begins when a customer faxes in an order. Using the fax has become such an efficient way to handle orders that in one case Columbia even bought a fax machine for one of its customers so he could use it for ordering.

Battling bottlenecks
Having read Eliyahu M. Goldratt's book, "The Goal," with its extensive advice on smooth production flow, Sheehan is constantly on the lookout for ways to deal with bottlenecks in his production flow. That's easier said than done in a shop that crams a large number of workers and machines into about 6,000 square feet of space.

Normal production begins in the rough mill area, where lumber is ripped on an old Ekstrom-Carlson rip saw and planed on a Martin T43 24-inch planer. Stiles and rails are cut to size on a Whirlwind saw using a TigerStop system. Cut data is directly downloaded to the TigerStop from the front office using Door Lister software.

A small fleet of shapers from Powermatic, SCM and SAC, tackle the joinery chores. One of the newer additions is a Voorwood shape and sand system that combines the two processes into one machine for faster processing of parts. Nearby is the sanding area, where big production sanders work alongside workers with hand-held sanders. The hand sanding is done at a number of shop built downdraft stations. Rather than conventional flat tables, the downdraft stations are angled, which Sheehan says makes for a more comfortable work position for his people. The production sanders include a DMC Finesand FS110 random orbit sander and a Butfering 44-inch widebelt sander. One bottleneck Sheehan discovered was in his assembly area. He already had put in place an RFS glue system for faster glueups. Then he moved assembly and widebelt sanding operations to a night shift with a greatly reduced crew. In analyzing his production flow, staff and machinery allocations, Sheehan says he tries to "push three bottlenecks ahead."

"I look for what will save the most labor and still keep quality up, or something that will allow me to do something I can't do now," he says.