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Why not make my own?

 

With the enormous selection of wood products today’s new home construction contractors have available to them, it’s no wonder that transition pieces account for a great deal of service issues and callbacks.  One of several reoccurring issues generally arises:

1)      Transitions are not available from the distributor in the required timetable

2)      Transition pieces do not match the installed floorcovering

3)      Item numbers are often confused and the representatives who are knowledgeable about the flooring know little about the transitions.

After a great deal of frustration, it may seem logical for the contractor to produce the transition pieces in house.  Before investing in this business venture, there are many factors that must be weighed for the cost benefit.

Waste:

Unfinished millwork products will always be less expensive than their prefinished counterparts for obvious reasons.  Unfinished products are generally sold in “mill runs,” meaning that graded lumber is cut, milled, and shipped with no secondary grading process of the final product.  This results in random lengths ranging from 3’ to 12’.  Many pieces will have heavy mineral streaks, chatter marks, and knot holes.  While these pieces can be culled at the finishing site, the buyer is generally billed for the entire mill run, including culls.  The below chart details an expected usable yield of a mill run order from a reputable supplier.  Notice how the usable percentage decreases with length.  This chart does not factor any waste associated with culls due to stain or finish mismatches.

Manpower:

Since the machinery required to automate the production of prefinished transition pieces is extremely cost prohibitive, an individual skilled in the use of stains to produce a particular color is necessary.  Many contractors already have this labor pool available in their site finished divisions.  The problem here is simple economics, in the time needed to produce ten pieces; the same individual can potentially earn many times more finishing a floor.  This leaves the employer with only one option, he has to pay the individual much more per piece or take a salaried employee out of the field and hire someone to replace him.  With the number of product families and colors that today’s contractors are offering their customers, at least one full time person is required to be on hand at all times to mix stain, set up a finishing area, produce pieces, clean the tools used, and yield usable product from the mill run shipments mentioned above.

Space:

Ask any warehouse manager, and they will likely say “I need a bigger warehouse.”  Unfortunately, floor space costs money.  In many areas and in most situations, adding on to a building is expensive or impossible.  Therefore, in order to produce transitions in house, an area of the warehouse must generally be commandeered and allocated solely as a workspace for a trim producer.  This can be a sizeable area as space is needed to stain and finish the transitions, store raw materials (unfinished product, stain, finish, air compressors, etc.), and dry coated pieces.  Most finishes that can be applied economically must either be sprayed or brushed on and need to be free from dust for at least 6 hours with 24 hours needed before they can be handled.  These factors alone require a significant investment in real estate and careful planning and must be factored into the final piece cost.

Planning:

Most contractors in the new home construction industry are turn-key operations.  This requires material to be available quickly, and completely.  Much time is spent forecasting everyday stocking material from flooring distributors and manufacturers, when the twists of planning production capabilities is added to the mix, the contractor’s systems are exponentially complicated.  Proper lead times must be given to the individual responsible for producing the transition pieces and last minute orders can become a problem if he is not available or assigned to other tasks.

Inventory:

Tracking usage of the separate components involved in any kind of production requires systems and processes not normally found implemented at service based companies.  Individual components can typically be ordered via standard methods already in place, but the individual components are consumed by the contractor and must be accounted for during the accounting process or else the contractor will have an artificially inflated inventory reflecting items in stock that have been used to create a totally separate and unaccounted item.  Example:  the contractor will order stain, wood, and finish under a purchase order, receive it into his computer system and thus will show it in inventory.  During the course of that week, these items will be used and probably not checked out of inventory to make a transition piece.  During the course of that week, the contractor will possibly have several gallons of stain and finish, several hundred feet of wood unaccounted for, and several dozen transition pieces on hand that are probably not labeled and not input into his computer system.  Over the course of a year, this can total a significant dollar amount and result in the overproduction of transitions already on hand.  With no labeling system in place, tracking material returned from the field can be a nightmare.

 

Summary:

 In this article, only a few items to consider have been presented for consideration.  In conclusion, a contractor would be much better suited to allow a full time manufacturer to shoulder the burden of production.  With a manufacturer who specializes in transition production, the contractor can leave his existing systems in place and treat the manufacturer as any other supplier.  To attempt an in house production on a large scale can possibly result in many unforeseen hurdles that must be navigated and could require much more expense and time than the contractor had originally anticipated.  Many of these factors are not direct costs and thus, are often overlooked when considering in house production but, nevertheless, must still be included for a true cost picture.