The Three Ps

October 4, 2002

By Kevin M. Padden

Opening a new shop, moving to a new location or expanding your current facility can be a great thing. However, there are a number of things that you’ll need to do prior to making your commitment and actually starting the project.
The first three things you’ll need to do are: Pre-plan, Plan & PLAN.
I know this has the sound of the old real-estate saying – Location, Location, Location – but as corny as this may sound, you can’t plan enough when it comes to major capital. The more research that you can do will only pay off in the end for you when your project is complete and actually making money from your creation.
In your pre-planning stage, you first need to establish what type of fabrication you’d like to do. Do you want to concentrate on residential, commercial or both? The next question is volume; what kind of volume will you be doing in a month, six months, a year, two years and five years from now?
The last question is geographic. Are you going to keep your operation small and only service a five- to 25-square-mile area, or are you going after the business in a state, region, our the entire country?
Once you’ve established those answers, you’ll be able to answer the next set of questions. What kind of equipment will I really need? How much of each kind will I need? And, how soon will I need it?
At this point in your planning stage, in my opinion, it would be of great benefit for you to look at the opportunities available for education from trade associations and trade shows.
The best opportunities for you to glean knowledge (without buying the wrong machine in order to get it first-hand), is to attend U.S. trade gatherings that cater to the stone industry – and to check out the training opportunities at National Training Center for Masonry & Stone Trades (NTC).
StonExpo 2002 will be held in Baltimore from Dec. 5-7, and Coverings will be held in Orlando from March 24-27, 2003. Both of these events are a gold mine for getting knowledge and advice on various topics that are relevant to our industry.
Both StonExpo 2002 and Coverings have educational seminars that deal with a variety of topics from fabrication tips to designing and building your own fabrication operation. You can obtain a tremendous amount of information on how to set up your shop prior to buying your first piece of equipment.
Additionally, each show has the actual machines on display that you’d consider purchasing, along with technical and sales representatives available from the various manufacturers to answer any questions. You’ll find that the majority of fabricators will come to these two shows a year (and sometimes up to two years) in advance of buying their first piece of equipment.
The other worthwhile investment that I would highly recommend is to attend the NTC. Run by Fred Hueston, this organization conducts training seminars in various locations, as well as their newly opened base of operations located in North Carolina. This can give you “hands-on” training in templating, fabrication techniques, estimating, slab layout and other day-to-day needs.
After some shows and training, you’ll have a better knowledge base to make decisions that effect not only the cost of your operation, but its efficiency as well. Start thinking of those plans for the next six months, a year, two years and five years as your timeline.
Coupled with the other questions listed above, it’ll have an important positive (or negative, if you don’t do your homework) impact on your overall operation. Here’s where you really plan.
An example: Let’s say you decide that you want to do custom residential fabrication of granite countertops in your local area only. You go to an event, ready to buy some equipment. The show opens, you go out on the floor and see all of the saws – and get glassy-eyed after the eleventh one you look at.
The sales person says to you that, “this baby will do everything you’d ever want to do with a slab of stone.” It’s an automatic saw (which means it will cut pieces from a single slab from a programmed set of directions that you plug in to the command module) and it costs $75,000. You write the check, and your new saw is delivered three months later.
Your new saw runs great, and you’re the envy of the fabricating neighborhood. Now, you can really cut a slab.
So, you go out to your first job after getting the saw up to speed; you make your templates, bring them back to the shop, set your first slab on the saw bed, and start marking your cut lines on the slab. You cut out your pieces and proceed with the fabrication.
And you do it again. And again. The subsequent jobs you cut all have the same scenario – you make a custom template. Each job is unique with its dimensions, even if the houses use the same floor plan for the same builder.
Here’s the reality check: You could have saved $20,000 – or more – by purchasing a manual saw that just cuts the stone without using a computer. Most fabricators that do custom residential work will tell you that projects are primarily templated work, and a manual saw is the best machine for the task. (This goes back directly to the question “What kind of equipment do I really need?”)
Or, take power. The amount and quality of electrical service available to you at your present or future location will have a direct influence on how much work you’ll be able to accommodate in relationship to your own planning timeline.
One expense you should plan is signing up an electrical contractor that you can trust before you have that perfect piece of equipment or that perfect new location picked out. Fabricators can fail to do this, and it costs them either now or later – but it will cost them.
An immediate example of this is when a building and a location are great, and you really want it for your new shop. Your real-estate broker says, “Oh sure, this property should have all the electric power you’ll need … 220, 221, 222, whatever it takes.”
Mark this with a huge red flag, take the time to get your electrician out to the site for a survey on just how much immediate power is available.
And down the road? Let’s take the previous example, except that you didn’t bother to get the electrician out for an inspection. Besides, the building is zoned for industrial manufacturing, isn’t it?
You move in and start setting up all of your equipment, only to find that your available power is almost all taken. This isn’t a big problem, because you have all of your equipment powered up for production now.
The key word in this example is now. What about in two years, or maybe five? If you have any expansion included in your planning timeline, your electrical needs will certainly take a charge out of the bottom line in the future.
A parallel issue related to space is the “E” word: expandability. Fabricators who do well have the foresight to see their need to expand, and plan accordingly for when they have to expand, with as little disruption to daily operations as possible.
Presuming the sale or rental price is right for you on the new place of your dreams, the questions I would be asking myself in the search for the perfect shop location would be all related to … well, expandability.
Can the location grow with the volume of my shop? In five years, can I buy another saw and CNC machine, and have the room for the new machines to be installed?
Is there adequate electrical service now, as well as for expanding in the future? Is there adequate water supply, as well as the room to build a recycling system on the property for current and future needs? Is there room for dry and wet fabrication for today’s workload and tomorrow’s growth?
Is there room for me to store more slabs that I would carry as stock? Is there going to be adequate parking for more employees than on the payroll now? Is my market or area of business close to my new shop? Can I be proud of this location and have my customers come to this facility? Is there an adequate amount of parking for my customers? Is there room for semi trailers to enter, maneuver, load, offload and exit my property safely? Is the property secure?
Establishing your new fabrication shop or expanding your current operation can be a tricky, yet satisfying proposition for you if done with – you guessed it – proper pre-planning, planning and planning.
Kevin M. Padden is General Manager of the Granite Division of New Home Interiors in Phoenix.