Digital Templating: Broadband’s Bonus

The benefits of digital templating for production have always been that countertops can be measured quickly and be made to fit perfectly the first time. Accuracy and speed are two reasons digital templating has become an integral part of the modern countertop industry, but those benefits are not the only ones a digital-templating system can provide.
The biggest production boost outside the shop is realized by combining a digital-templating system with a mobile broadband connection. This gives a templater the ability to send production-quality drawings back to the shop without having to return there to drop off (and often explain) stick or cardboard templates. The templating truck can be traded in for the templating hybrid or, as seen in one of the PhotoTop® ads, the templating motorcycle.
Even with gas prices dropping, a smaller vehicle for templating is going to offer immediate cost savings. It also fits with the push toward green products. How is it going to look to the end user of your green countertop when you show up with the gas-guzzling V8 to make a template? You may end up feeling like Al Gore explaining the whopping electrical bill he got for heating his pool.
Anyone who’s had the horrible experience of stick templates breaking apart, or otherwise being ruined, might be glad to give them up and go digital. The hot-glue gun can become a thing of the past. Not to mention sitting in traffic on the way back to the shop to drop off templates as your wife texts to remind you you’re late for dinner. Again.
A templater who can remotely email back submission drawings is going to produce more templates per-mile-driven, as the only “dead” miles driven back to the shop will be to drop off sinks, faucets or cooktops. With digital files on these items continually improving (except from unhelpful sink sellers from China named Gary) the need to go back to the shop for any reason will continue to decrease. If the make and model numbers for these items are available at the time the template is scheduled, the predigitized shapes can be loaded onto the templater’s laptop computer and dropped into the drawing at the jobsite before being sent to the shop.
The ability to template and remotely email drawings to the shop can potentially make a fabricator more-competitive by factoring in less money for templating time per job. In today’s competitive economy, every cost savings is important.
Mobile broadband also allows a templater to get a job into production more quickly. With less delay between the time when a project is templated and when templates are received, a hot job can be turned around at a more-rapid pace. A fabricator who improves his turnaround time can use that as an advertising tool, or even start a promotion that includes a quick turnaround for a slightly higher price.
A quick turnaround can also be helpful in a deadline-driven multi-unit residential that is “hit-and-miss” with units ready for tops. Instead of an endless stream of hurried back-and-forth template trips to the jobsite, the location can be put on a templating route; finished units can be templated and sent in as needed from the jobsite.
Another production benefit with digital templating and broadband is the streamlining of job information when the templater prepares the production drawing at the jobsite. A templater who can’t leave a jobsite without sending a finished drawing has no choice but to gather every necessary measurement and detail that will be used when creating the countertop. Gone will be the wasteful return trip to get that one missed measurement holding up the entire project.
Streamlined information gathering also helps avoid having more than one person look for data pertaining to a job. If the office manager has to talk to the appliance store about the cooktop cutout and then relay the information back to the templater, you’ve introduced the potential for a mistake.
Whenever information is passed from person-to-person, there’s always the possibility for misinterpretation or error, no matter how good your inter-office communication system. A templater who has, or can get, all the necessary job information while at the jobsite avoids this entirely.
Using a digital-templating system to create a finished drawing while at the jobsite can also expedite production by allowing a homeowner to clearly see each detail of the countertop. We’ve all had the joy of trying to read small numbers on a blurry fax; if you fax a drawing to Ms. Jones for approval, and she doesn’t feel comfortable reading the numbers, the production of her tops may be delayed in direct proportion to how fast you can mail her an easy-to-read drawing.
By having a finished drawing on the computer screen while still at the jobsite, the templater can zoom in to show Ms. Jones every last detail in minutia. She can ask every question that comes to mind and then give her approval.
With the tablet PC used by Laser Products Industries’ LT-55 and InnoDraw Inc.’s InnoDraw™, the homeowner can literally sign-off on-screen. With ETemplate Systems’ ETemplate™ Photo, PhotoTop, or Prodim International’s Proliner®, Ms. Jones can see the entire kitchen drawn in CAD and then sign off on paper documents brought along for her job.
It’s also possible to clarify a quotation on the spot by getting up-to-date square-footage information from the finished drawing. If the templater spots discrepancies between what’s been quoted and what’s actually at the jobsite, new information can go back to the shop for a revised quote, which can be quickly passed on to the homeowner for approval.
We’ve all been held up on a job when the price goes up, but the homeowner can’t be found to okay the new numbers. Getting their approval on actual square footage at templating can avoid that delay.
Being able to provide real time quoting information at a jobsite also gives the templater a chance to up-sell while templating. If Ms. Jones wants to replace the countertop in the powder room, but didn’t get it quoted with her kitchen, the templater can provide that number on-the-spot with a quick measure that’s sent back to the shop by broadband. Or, better yet, he can have a quoting program on his computer and get Ms. Jones her numbers immediately.
Upgrade to full-height backsplash? Provide a number on the spot and the homeowner might go for it. That’s just about the closest thing to impulse buying the stone industry will ever see.
Creating a full drawing at the jobsite can also benefit production when it comes to material.
If there’s a possibility that an additional slab might be needed for a job, a fully drawn kitchen can be optimized on the spot to determine the answer. Production can then act quickly to source more material for the job, thus potentially reducing turnaround time.
If seam locations are moved and the stone has a ‘flow’ that needs to be followed, the pieces of a fully drawn kitchen can be compared to the grain of the stone to determine if more material is necessary. In addition, if Ms. Jones wants to add that powder-room vanity, and a remnant list is available to the templater, the stone selection can be made immediately and the job can move forward.
A shop without a CNC or waterjet can still take full advantage of digital templating by getting a plotter. The templater in the field can email back finished drawings of labeled and detailed individual pieces. Those outlines can then be run through the plotter, where Mylar® will be scored with the knife attachment and labeled with the pen attachment, providing both the full-sized shape and fabrication instructions.
Combine that with printed-out CAD drawings, and you’ll have all the information necessary to start production on a kitchen. Even the shop with only a bridge saw can take advantage of a system like that.
Digital-templating systems continue to adapt to circumstances and changes in the industry to become more-useful tools for both the templater in the field and the production staff in the shop. While the production system isn’t quite seamless, digital-template companies continue to make great strides by listening to user feedback and taking advantage of emerging technologies.
The upcoming years are sure to bring us more advances as well. Maybe we’ll even get an iPhone app that does the entire process.
Maybe.
Jason Nottestad, a 15-year veteran of the stone industry, is National Customer Service Manager for VT Stone Surfaces; he’s now on his third year of “The Installer” columns for Stone Business. He can be reached at JNottestad@vtindustries.com.

This article first appeared in the February 2009 print edition of Stone Business. ©2009 Western Business Media Inc.