All stone fab shops want to produce work with speed and precision. For a new fab shop, bottlenecks in production are a major concern. One of the first bottlenecks fab shops usually face is sink cutouts. They can be one of the slowest and most tedious parts of your production process if you handle it wrong.
How do you know if your sink cutting is a bottleneck?
If it’s taking you longer than an hour per sink cutout, you’ve got a bottleneck.
Here are a few approaches fab shops take when trying to solve this bottleneck. We’ll tell you which don’t work, and what does.
Using Your Best Fabricator
Some “solve” sink cutout bottlenecks by putting their best, most experienced fabricators on sinks. That’s a big mistake! Your best fabricator should be managing operations, training and quality control. Not wasting their talent on a single task.
Buying Automated Equipment Too Soon
Some shops will want to throw money and machines at this problem, with the fear that they won’t be able to keep up. Automated or semi-automated equipment is a great investment. But many new shops can’t afford them, and don’t have the volume where they’re even necessary. We’ve seen many shops buy sink equipment prematurely, when all they needed was a smarter sink fabrication system with the tools they already had. If you have limited funds or want to invest in a gantry saw before sink equipment, there’s another way to beat bottlenecks.
Establishing a Sink Fabrication System
Keep your shop team balanced and save money by planning ahead. Put a sink cutout system into action, one that anyone can follow. With the right system anyone can fabricate sink cutouts with fantastic, high-quality results.
At AccuGlide, we have a tried and true sink cutout fabrication system that has helped hundreds of shops. Our next start-up guide will outline this system.