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Monday, September 28, 2009

kitchen design

I have been doing loads of design work lately. designing 2 kitchens at the same time, job #124 and job #122. things are going very well, I have to attribute much of my success to my association with NKBA. there is so much that I learned from attending a study group. I am also planning to attend another seminar at Clark next week. Clark has got an incredible showroom, they are the distributor for Wolf and sub-zero. We have had some trouble getting this special veneer for job 119. the vendor sent out the wrong the veneer. They took it back and are sending out the correct stuff, however the problem is that now I look incompetent in the eyes of the client.

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Thursday, September 24, 2009

our way

today we were working job number 115, it is in Cambridge, and is a decent size job. It is the first one with this customer. We are doing our best work. I am heading up the install, and so far have been very successful it is not a kitchen but instead many other cabinets laced through-out the house. We have been pretty successful about executing the way we intend. We are trying to mimic how a restaurant serves food. I take the order from the customer and the shop or kitchen prepares the food or cabinets. I bring to the customer exactly what they want in the amount that they want it at the time they want it. I do this by monitoring the progress of the job sites myself. my hands and head are involved. I can maintain several jobs at one time and still make each person feel like they are my most important client. We are trying to execute each cabinet install in a 2 or 3 phase strategy. so I don't bring the items needed for phase 3 until we are in phase 3. when we bring an item to a job site we have a specific intent of installing the item.

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new team member

we have a new member on our team. His name is Marlo. he is 24 and doesn't know anything about what we do. We will train him. The primary advantages he brings is a drivers license, good English skills, fluent in Spanish, and skip to his step. Those are very basic but necessary for a laborer. My goal is to leverage my own time by having Marlo do some goffering that is running around picking things up. I want to also slowly train him in installation and finishing work. When it comes to new employees attitude is the most important thing to me. If the personality doesn't fit then it can bring the whole team down.

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

new book

I have started reading a very good book it is called "the goal". it is about manufacturing. The premise is eliminating constraints, and increasing throughput. I really like it so far and have a hard time putting it down, I think it will have a profound impact on how I view my business. I have been thinking more about the wood shop lately and what markets we compete in. So far we do a little bit of everything, which is great in this economy because I have always said that whoever is trained in the most platforms will survive. Other than general survival now I am focused on specializing in providing kitchen cabinets hence my membership and involvement in NKBA, in providing custom furniture to Interior designers, and providing GC's with general mill work. all of these area's I am "not" interested in a public name for myself but wish to sell to the trades and fly under the radar, and in affect help the individual trades make a better name for themselves. KBWC is a job shop that works with wood and similar products I am trying to market to different segments that use woodwork.

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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

job site realities

the other day I went to do a final install at a small job, just one cabinet. MY final install is where we install the doors and drawers and any shelves, it is the last time I will come into contact with the product. I checked twice to make sure that the job site would be open and I could do my job. When I got to the job the cabinet was covered in plastic all taped up and the painters where preparing to spray all the trim in the house. This happens more than I would like to admit. It's not that it is bad management it's just that the job is managing itself and my clearance comes from people who are not always in touch with the day to day conditions or schedule of the site. So I have to chose how am I going to react, I can leave and chose to come back, or I can try to find out what the real needs are of the painters. In this case I found that had about 2 hours of time before they needed to spray, just enough time for me peel back there plastic and install the fronts and drawer boxes and put the tape back over the cabinet. It added about 20 minutes to my job that day, not that big of a deal.

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