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Quality Done Right
High-end residential woodworking company C&C Woodworking uses CABINET VISION to boost efficiency without sacrificing craftsmanship
Spacious and bright, the shop floor at C&C Woodworking is a hive of activity as some of the best in the business apply their craft to high-end projects big and small.
Owned by talented woodworker and entrepreneur Alex Barceló, who serves as the company’s vice-president, C&C Woodworking is based in picturesque Naples, Fla., an affluent community with no shortage of breathtaking living spaces. Adept at fulfilling a range of cabinetry, millwork and molding needs, the company employs a team of 31 and matches high-end projects with equally high residential production standards. Barceló’s support team includes Eric Baker, chief designer and engineer with 40 years of experience; and Pablo Trullen, production supervisor and CABINET VISION programmer.
A trip to one of C&C Woodworking’s job sites reveals stunning architecture, waterfront views, and stark differences between C&C and many other woodworking outfits. Solid, top-notch materials and dovetail joints as smooth as silk are defining elements of the company, both of which boil down to a common denominator: quality.
To ensure that the company’s shop staff understand how their hard work fits into the equation, employees are taken into the field to see the end results of their labor.
“They’re proud of what they do,” Barceló says. “When they go to a job site, it helps to make them continue to do well. Everybody who comes here, we help them to grow, and the key to making a strong team is realizing the potential in the company.”
C&C Woodworking is operated under the “5S” business philosophy: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain.
“If what you’re making is going to be the best, you have to start with a solid base, and CABINET VISION is part of that base.”
Pablo Trullen, production supervisor and CABINET VISION programmer
Much of the company’s standardization is achieved with the use of the CABINET VISION design-to-manufacturing solution, by Vero Software, which helps C&C Woodworking to produce, organize, label, and track its projects from start to finish.
“Now that we’re more efficient, we’re also more competitive and, just because CABINET VISION helps us to be more efficient, we aren’t jeopardizing quality,” Barceló says.
Trullen joined C&C Woodworking in 2014, when he was tasked with increasing efficiency by implementing CNC manufacturing software to power the company’s machinery. While his sights were initially set on a different solution, exposure to CABINET VISION at a trade show convinced him that it was the right choice for C&C Woodworking.
“Our standards are the absolute highest,” says Production Supervisor Pablo Trullen, surveying the day’s workload. “Our goal is to make everything the very best that it can be made, and that is what we strive for every day.”
“It was more user friendly and thus easier to train, which was very important for us,” he says. “It also has the labeling system, which made it a really good fit for our shop.”
To begin a project in CABINET VISION, the dimensions of the room in which the project will be installed are fed into the software, followed by the dimensions of the actual project. CABINET VISION is able to generate realistic, professional-looking project renderings that help staff and clients to visualize the end result, and can also serve as a strong sales tool.
In addition to increasing visualization capability, CABINET VISION has helped the team at C&C Woodworking become more efficient in assessing and analyzing vital project details.
“With CABINET VISION, once I finish putting a project in the software, I can immediately know with one click how many feet of baseboard, how many sheets of material, and how much hardware I will need.”
CABINET VISION’s ability to generate labels for each part was a significant selling point for C&C, which has come to rely on the labeling system to track parts as they come off the router and make their way through the shop’s departments.
“The parts are labeled after they’re cut and, once they’re assembled, they get a label product and go to fine-tuning and then finishing,” Trullen says. “The labels are one of the best things about the software because now everyone in the shop knows what they’re looking at. It saves on time and we make less mistakes.”
To further increase efficiency, the company takes advantage of CABINET VISION’s nesting feature, which eliminates time-intensive manual nesting while maximizing materials.
“We were making our own nests, but with CABINET VISION it takes one hour instead of 10 hours,” Trullen says, adding that the solution’s batching capability has helped the company further boost efficiency while reducing waste.
“We used to program one part at a time, so now the whole project is optimized and we’re saving days,” he says. “With batching, you can combine two or three different jobs, and when it’s done you can separate them easily because the labels tell you where everything goes.”
Because C&C Woodworking now has much more accurate information regarding exactly how long it will take to manufacture its products, as well as exactly how much material will be required, the company uses CABINET VISION as an estimating tool.
Once parts are cut, assembled, and fine-tuned by expert woodworkers, they are sent to the painting department, where they are sanded, primed, sanded again, and painted. To cut down on drying time — which took an average of five hours — the company installed a custom painting and drying line, complete with a conveyor system for hanging and floor-mounted parts. The system, which applies 130-degree heat to drying parts, travels 30 feet in the 10 minutes it takes the parts to completely dry.
“If something takes three to five hours to dry, that’s at least half a day, so this system makes us much, much more efficient,” Trullen says.
The drying system is in step with C&C Woodworking’s philosophy regarding manufacturing technology. “If you want to grow, you need to produce more, but we wanted to be able to become more efficient” Trullen says. “In order to grow without adding people, we added technology.”
For Barceló, Trullen, and the C&C Woodworking team, CABINET VISION software and the support they receive from CABINET VISION staff is part of the strong technological foundation upon which they can continue to increase efficiency.
“If what you’re making is going to be the best, you have to start with a solid base, and CABINET VISION is part of that base.”
About the Company
Name: C&C Woodworking
Business: Cabinetry, millwork and molding
Web: candcwoodworking.com
Benefits Achieved
- Optimized material usage and management
- Increased visualization capabilities
- Greater organization and ease in part identification on the shop floor
Comments
“If what you’re making is going to be the best, you have to start with a solid base, and CABINET VISION is part of that base.”
Pablo Trullen, production supervisor and CABINET VISION programmer
