November 2004

Software intEgratION is secret to success 

at KITCHEN WORKS

The kitchen manufacturing sector in the United Kingdom has changed and matured over the past 20 years, thanks to new software integration. Buyers are no longer presented with (or satisfied with) a number of standard options which offered limited choice and even more limited quality. Instead, choice has become the maxim for success, and the modern kitchen customer is an educated and discerning factor in a growing market.

By implication “choice” means non-standard which, in turn, puts enormous pressure on manufacturing flexibility. Gone are the days when economies of scale could be realized through large-volume batch production, and the guys that have stayed in the game and succeeded have adapted their factories with the installation of smart, flexible machinery and the futuristic software needed to run them.

One such success story is a company based at Gateshead near Newcastle in northeast England. Kitchen Works was started in January 1998 by partners Graeme Latimer and Colin Crystal to manufacture high-quality kitchen and bedroom cabinets on a totally custom basis with no minimum order quantities. 

Their targeted customer base included the many and varied independent retailers and kitchen studios that abound on the high streets and retail estates in every town and city across the United Kingdom. The idea was to offer color-coordinated cabinets to match door colours to any size, configuration and specification. To achieve this Kitchen Works set a minimum standard of 18mm MFC construction (including backs) and hardware options like Blum Metabox, full-extension Tandembox, Blumotion self-closing and Blum Clip hinge products. Most of the door designs are specified by the customer and brought in to be matched by the cabinet. (Kitchen Works does manufacture edged MFC doors).

This enormously flexible range of choice has succeeded in taking the company from a first year turnover of £20,000 to a current figure of £4.5 million through year-on-year growth. A staff of 40 is currently employed. Today they are geared to producing 200 kitchens a week which equates to an average of 3,000 individual cabinets a week. The other key ingredient in the success for Kitchen Works has been a seven- to 10-working-day delivery schedule from order. This compares with the more average four- to five-week turnaround.So how have they done this?

“We realized early on that we had to automate and integrate our processes as efficiently as possible,” explains Latimer. As quality cabinet manufacturers, their machinery requirements were essentially panel saws, drilling and routing as well as straight-line edgebanding.

Today Kitchen Works operates three Selco beam saws with CNC controls; two standard CNC drilling and machining centers; and a new, high-capacity through-feed CNC drilling and machining center with four independent heads. They also have an Italian Paoloni sliding table saw for off-line work. 

Where their real success has come is in implementing an integrated software package from primary order source right through to machine controls and dispatch. It is software that would work for them in their quest for flexibility, and impose no restrictions on order processing or manufacturing. 

Latimer says that their research into a software solution was extensive and eventually led them to a specialist company, Linkwood, based in Surrey, south of London. Linkwood’s managing director, Bob Hockey, explains that their company is set up to operate exclusively within the woodworking industry as a systems solutions provider. They believe their success is also in their flexibility and ability to supply anything from a single stand-alone optimizer to a fully integrated administration/manufacturing solution like the one at Kitchen Works. Linkwood, for 18 years, has been exclusive to the United Kingdom, Mediterranean and Middle East regions; dealers for the software products of the New Jersey-based company Pattern Systems International (PSI), and a variety of PSI products are combined with Linkwood software to ensure the productive solution at Kitchen Works.

System Integration
Bob Hockey takes up the story with a synopsis of the software in use at Kitchen Works:

At the front end is Quick Sales, a Linkwood product which is a catalog-based administration program that works in conjunction with PSI’s Product Planner. 

Quick Sales includes a customer directory with details of orders and enables quotations to be raised and stored for both standard and custom-sized cabinets with user definable options that can be for cabinets; for instance, the quantity of shelves, the back inset or void, the drawer front height and end panels to the floor, etc.

Once an order is accepted and confirmed it can be sent to manufacturing (Product Planner) and part or full delivery notes can be raised along with bar code labels for the products related to the department in which they are produced. So, for example, this would include standard modular cabinets, custom-sized cabinets, worktops and various other accessories. Included within the program is a progress report which provides information on when each report and function was initiated and completed, along with the details of the order’s whereabouts within the system by customer details. Numerous statistical reports are available pertaining to individual customers and can be added to when required by the user.

PSI’s Product Planner is a formula-based parametric bill of materials program which allows the user to create his own product catalog exactly per his method of construction or manufacturing without any compromising. Jobs created within Quick Sales are imported into Product Planner where the cabinetry is broken down into cut lists, door lists, hardware and accessories. Once again, all the reports within this program can be modified by the user and added to if required.

Within Product Planner is a manufacturing release manager that issues cut lists to be batch released by product or jobs to the Cut Planner optimization software to plan parts cutting from sheet sizes available. (Details like grain direction are also included where necessary.) The release function also triggers Drill Mate which creates all the downstream drilling (and routing) patterns. The optimized cutting lists and layouts created by Cut Planner are downloaded via LAN to the CNC controls on the three Selco beam saws.

The next PSI product, QuikTrak, is a bar code labeling program which works in conjunction with Product Planner, Cut Planner and Drill Mate. Once a cut list has been optimized, user definable labels can then be printed with all the information necessary about the part, plus a graphic of the part showing its drilling and routing requirements; edges to be banded with whatever material; and a bar code/template number of the drilling template file.

So cut parts are ready for final downstream processes before assembly and this is where Drill Mate takes over, programming the CNC controls and set ups on the drilling and machining centers. Drill Mate is also a formula-based parametric template program that will automatically create simultaneously new drilling programs for all applicable changes to parts against a single dimensional change to a product.

Drilling pattern files for an entire job are saved into a job folder and transferred via LAN to the CNC controls so that when the part with label, having been applied to the part at the time of cutting, arrives at the machine the operator calls up the job folder on the CNC, scans the bar code label and the appropriate drill file is then called up to automatically set the machine and the panel is drilled and routed as required.

This flexible, integrated modular solution supplied by Linkwood — Pattern Systems for Kitchen Works has proved central to the company’s successful operation. It is this seamless operation between processes and machines that has allowed Kitchen Works to stay ahead of the game and increase their market share by ensuring they can offer a quality product and service exactly to customer specification when required.