Help with material handling (cabinet doors)
So I work in a shop and we average about 200 doors a day. We do custom cabinets so I can’t just have parts available cut to size ready to go so.
the owner of the company is pushing my department to become more efficient and I know it’s the process between cutting the rails and stiles and getting them over to my assembly line where we need to improve. I’ve tried to think of a cart to store all the parts for each door in a single slot, but I just haven’t had any luck does anyone else have any ideas or solutions they’ve used?
an average job is around 90-120 doors so if it’s a 5 price door we’ll have; 240 stiles 240 rails and 120 panels going on the higher end for simplicity. I’ll upload some designs I have drawn up and see what you guys think.
and also I know for a fact that we’re understaffed for the ambitions they have along with maintaining the best quality it’s just not really possible imo. Thanks CM
Replies
If we don’t know what equipment you have, no one can help you.
I replied and idk if it posted or not and if not it was a lot to type for it to be rejected by mods lol
Doesn’t look like it so we have speed 90 to cut , one machine can’t find online it’s called “t-Rex” cuts rails for doors only nothing with width smaller then 2in so our drawer parts go to the old machine we used for all stick cuts a voorwood shaper sander. So now material is going from machine to machine to assembly getting rolled around on a 4 tier cart. They’re all labeled and we desperate rails and stiles, but the owner wants my guys to pick up a panel and the rails and stiles as a set. I would love to do it but we have so many sizes of doors I find it nearly impossible
Want the run down. So from the machining side of the shop it’s another supervisors job to get me material. By the time it’s in my area I have sticks of various profiles and sizes. Obviously I’ve never posted here so hear with me
So we have the machine that cuts our parts to size it’s a Dimter speed 90. Has labeling and separates parts by rails and stiles. So we have 4 tier carts right which are a pain in the ass to keep parts organized on when people bump them or something.
So here’s on of the things that is a major issue for me we have this new machine for machining the stick on our rails, I tried to find specifics on the model online but can’t find anything it’s called a “T-Rex” it’s a huge pain in the ass to operate since I’m pretty sure it’s a prototype model. We can run door material there right but we have to run our drawers on our voorwood shape and sand , along with parts for panels.
So we’ve taken it from all the parts going through the voorwood and being organized to having them go from machine to machine to assembly. I’ve raised concerns over this but since they bought the machine I have to use it or get my ass ripped apart lol.
After that we’re ready for assembly which is done on a 5 row door clamping machine. 3 of the five stations work but our maintenance guy stopped working on it. (Was purchased used) and what we can’t build there is done on a standard door clamp table we have two.
Normally I’ll build a house by myself while my other 3 guys are split between building and sanding (viet sander) it’s badass one pass on the front and back and it’s done, then the dreaded hand sanding with orbital sanders. Another thing is we have the heads for sanding the edges of the doors in the voorwood I’ve got them and the shaper set up and ready to go but engineering needs to add a 1/16 to the material width to compensate for it. I’ve been told “we’re working on it forever !!” It’s like chairing my tail constantly tbh. It sucks because I truly love what I do but these people seem to just not care to make improvements on their end to help us.
After that we finally go to punching and putting hinges in doors. All of this with 4 people aside from the guy on the speed 90 he’s always cutting.
So we normally get a cart with a pile of door panels not organized whatsoever by the machining side of the shop and a cart that’s somewhat organized but you still search for parts.
When I build a house I lay out my panels in order by cab number and use them to find my rails and stiles. I’ve read about sorting doors from smallest to largest which I’m all for but we have various size doors in custom cabinet shop so it just seems like it would be more difficult considering my cut list is printed in numerical order not by size
First photo is rails and stiles on carts we use now
Second is the great use the machining side of shop are making of my carts I build for door panels (slots are for rooms)
We have 101 for cab 1 room 1 102 cab 2 room 2 etc. 201 cab 1 room 2. Idk if that’s a standard or not I’m fairly young only been in the industry for 3 years
Here's an idea of a material organizer. You could put something like this on an existing cart to try out or put it on casters.
Seems like you have the most to gain by training the machine room guys to stack the parts for each door together. Machining parts and assembly take the time they take. Better sorting and stacking will eliminate the time lost searching.
This is a cabinets out the door issue, not how many doors. I expect the machine group also cuts the cabinet sides, bottoms and backs as well. A couple of six packs around the conference table with a big white board for several Fri afternoons would help. Which shop is the limiting factor and why, how can changes in other shops reduce backlog in the that shop. Have the guys in the shops take ownership in the fix, not the managers. Good luck
How do you track production ? I see no identification sheet with the wood being stacked, normally you would have a sheet with each order with the order number, part number, quantity and special instructions etc… seems you’re doing batch manufacturing in a custom shop , ideally you would build in a continuous process with each part being fed to the assembly table straight from the last machining step. You save stacking time, moving the cart time and un stacking time and if something gets out of adjustment, you don’t have a pile of wood that needs rework or scrap.