A&J Custom Cabinets Inc. in Vancouver, WA, specializes in residential cabinetry for subdivisions, ringing up $6 million in annual gross sales. The 15-year-old business uses two Holzma beam saws, two Weeke point-to-point machines and two Holz-Her edgebanders as its workhorses.

But earlier this year, in an analysis of production flow-through, the facility turned up a bottleneck centered on the beam saw, says President Don Sullivan. The solution? Equip a chop saw with a TigerStop automated cut-off stop and programmable pusher from Precision Automation.

TigerStop Opens the Flood Gates
"It's an easy, quick, cost-effective way of increasing our through-put," Sullivan says. "If we can free the bottleneck, we can put more work through the shop. Our focus was on cutting that constraint."

Thirty percent of the cabinet components they once produced on the beam saw are now cut by the chop saw, he says. Assemblers aren't left waiting for parts. An added bonus is the speed of the chop saw and digital shop combination. "It's taken the face frame operation from a 30-minute job to a five-minute job," he says.

The employee running the saw can produce parts as fast as he can pull labels from the workstation's printer, Sullivan says. "It's made the department much more efficient."

Efficiency is vital in an expanding business. Sullivan plans to move out of his current 32,000-sq-ft facility next year into new quarters of at least 50,000 sq. ft, but hasn't settled on whether he'll build a new plant or buy or lease existing space.

Until recently he's focused on serving the area within a 100-mile radius. But Sullivan has a broader vision. An A&J showroom will open soon in Bend, OR, with future expansion targets lined up in Boise, ID, and the Tri-Cities area of Washington state. Eventually he hopes to move into the East Coast market.

Melamine and hardwoods make up most of the company's cabinets, with oak predominating. He says that's unlikely to change because oak is easy to work with and "very forgiving." His customers are mainly builders of median-priced homes—"not high-end, but not low-end either."

Quality and service lie at the heart of repeat business, he says. "Contractors need work installed on time. We understand their needs and meet them."

And you never know where those contacts will lead. A recent deal for 70 units to be shipped to Guam came about from a local builder's recommendation to an export company. In five years, Sullivan hopes to grow from a large local company to a large regional company, serving Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Expanding further south, into California, may take a little longer.

As the shop grows, Sullivan plans to add more TigerStop™ units. The company currently has two, both set up to download cut lists directly from the drafting office's computers to avoid manual data entry.

The digital stop "takes a good deal of human error out of the equation," he says. "As long as the fence is adjusted right, every part comes out the same." The back fence prevents material from falling off the feed tables.

At A&J, the stop-and-pusher system is used mainly to cut linear stock to length for face frames, drawer parts and miscellaneous components. Sullivan plans to switch from a 12-foot fence to a 16-foot fence in order to handle longer pieces. The unit will sort cutting orders to optimize yield and push the stock to the correct cutting point without the need for manual measurements.

User-Friendly Technology
Training someone to run the workstation took about three hours, with another three hours to learn how to download cut lists. "It takes him about five minutes to download a day's work," Sullivan says. "We don't have to interrupt a draftsman to do that."