A cabinet shop that knows when to reorder

The parts shelf has no memory

Hinges, drawer slides, edge banding, screws and glue live on open shelves. A clipboard hangs at the end of the aisle, so people can write down what they take. Some days they do.

By Thursday, the sign-out sheet says two boxes of hinges went to a job, with no job number. The shelf says there are four boxes left. Nobody is sure which one is right.

Once a month, someone counts everything by hand. In between, the first sign of trouble is a call from a kitchen.

One short box of hinges

One missing box costs more than the box. This is an example for a shop this size, not a measured result, so try it with your own numbers.

Say one install a week stops for a missing box of hinges, and 2 installers wait 3 hours. That’s 6 hours. Add a 2-hour run to the supplier, and it comes to about 8 hours a week.

And that’s before the customer who took a day off work to let the installers in.

Pull it to the job, and the count keeps up

In the example, every part on the shelf is in Krew Point’s Warehouse, with its bin and how many are on hand. When someone takes hinges for a kitchen, they open Pull Material on the phone, pick the job, set how many, and tap Pull.

On hand goes down by that much, and the parts go on that job. When an install crew brings back what they didn’t use, they tap Return, and on hand goes back up.

New stock gets received when the supplier’s truck shows up. When it’s time to count the shelves, the count goes in the app, not on a clipboard.

Low stock shows up before it runs out

When a part runs low, it’s marked Low on the Warehouse list, and the office sees it on Home under Low stock. That’s the order list, already made.

The office manager orders hinges while the shelf still has two boxes, not when an installer calls from a kitchen.

Every pull names its job, so nobody has to guess where the hinges went.

Install day, without the clipboard

The install crews used to leave the shop with a printed job sheet and a cut list. Now each installer opens Today on the phone and sees the job, the address and Directions.

The job carries its checklist: boxes set, leveled and fastened, doors hung, drawers adjusted, touch-up, walk-through. The office watches it move from 2 of 7 to All done, and the last walk-through’s small fixes go on the punch list.

Photos of the finished kitchen go to the job from the phone. When the customer calls in a year about a door that sags, the office can see how it looked the day it went in.

Truck service shows up before install day

The trucks matter as much as the shelves. A truck down on install day is a kitchen that doesn’t get installed.

Each truck’s service is set by miles or by date, with its registration and insurance dates too. Drivers log mileage from the phone, under Truck Mileage. When a truck is due, the office sees it in Trucks due, and a reminder comes in as an alert.

The first count

Day one starts with a count: every part on the shelf, its bin and how many, typed into the Warehouse once, with us. The jobs, the trucks and the people go in the same week, so the numbers start out right.

Then the clipboard at the end of the aisle comes down. The phone in everyone’s pocket is the sign-out sheet now.