For What It’s Worth, Part I
Half of our mind thinks, “Gotta have it- surely that will solve one of the problems I have.” The other half thinks, “What a waste of money – it’ll never live up to the hype they’re using to sell it.” We only snap back into reality when our drool hits the catalog page, or someone bumps into us as we stand dumbfounded and block the trade-show aisle.
Where does this indecision come from – aside from the memory of being burned by a bad product in the past? More than likely it’s caused by our lack of understanding about the efficiency of the tools and processes we currently use during templating and installations. If we understood the timelines and costs associated with each of our tasks, it’d be easy for us to see the value (or lack of it) in a new product or process.
First, we need to look at templating and installing as, well, manufacturing. This means examining each step in the process for efficiency and cost, and exploring ways to accomplish a job more quickly for less money in the long term.
It’s easy to get caught up in the up-front cost of a product and miss the benefits it may bring over the course of time. A step-by-step evaluation can help to clarify what products and processes are offering real value.
You’re not going to succeed at this process without a little of the “devil’s advocate.” Challenging our thinking about how things are done is the only way to move forward with new techniques and technologies. Change is always uncomfortable, but it’s only painful if it doesn’t make a job easier at the end of the day.
Mounting an undermount kitchen sink is a great example of the way we can study a process for improvement. Ten years ago, the methods for mounting a sink were pretty limited; we spent a fair share of time figuring out how to cabinet-mount our sinks using a series of 1 X 4s and 2 X 4s, or cutting the right-sized hole in a plywood subtop.
Today, we have a wide variety of sink-mounting tools at our disposal, including kits that use brackets, wires and straps. Have these kits improved our ability to quickly mount a sink with a seal that’s secure and waterproof? Is one better than the rest and more cost-effective? The only way to find out is to test them against each other and your current method.
And therein lies one of the greatest challenges to improvement. You’ll have to invest money and time to buy each of the sink-mounting kits on the market, learn how it works, and try it out in the shop and a real-world setting.
Reading reviews about products is great, but until you actually try the real thing you’ll never know if it’s the right product. You may also find that certain sink mounts work great in some situations, but may be overkill for others.
But why stop there? Maybe you don’t feel the mounting kits offer the best solution for your company. If your fabricator doesn’t offer sink mounts cut into the stone, does that mean you can’t do them yourself? What would it take to receive a sink piece, set it up, and cut in sink mounting holes or slots? What about glue-on sink clips, and the cost and labor associated with them?
A true test includes all of the factors included in the life of an undermount sink. You may shy away from a bracket because it adds $20 dollars to the cost of an install, but how many sinks do you need to reattach per year because of your current sink-mounting method?
Sending a guy out to fix a sink is going to easily burn up a half day. If your real hourly cost associated with his work is $50, and he goes out three times a year, you just blew $600 on bad sink mounts.
This doesn’t even take into account the hit your business may take because of unsatisfied contractors or end-users. If a loose sink means you don’t get a referral from Ms. Jones, and another shop does her neighbor’s kitchen, your lost revenue just went into the thousands.
One problem we always faced with undermount sinks was pulling them into place while shimming or tightening sink clips. At times it became a two-person operation, with one holding the sink up in place while the other was inside the cabinet working on the sink clips. If this takes ten minutes, you may be out a little less than ten bucks for that second guy to help mount the sink. Or, you can go through the frustration and risk of trying to pull up a sink using a piece of wood and a bar clamp.
A ready-made sink undermounter costs about $150, depending on the make and vendor. Fifteen sinks later, it pays for itself in added crew efficiency. Not only are you saving the money from the two-person sink install, but now that second guy can be working on something else.
In this case, your up-front cost is quickly eclipsed. Long-term, the tool is paid for and takes time off your install. A undermounting tool also gives the sink a better seal when left on while the silicone is setting up, thus providing a better product as well as a more-efficient process.
Drilling faucet holes is another area that deserves an efficiency study, but perhaps not for the obvious reasons. It’s pretty easy to compare the cost of laying out a hole, cutting it, and cleaning up versus the cost of getting a hole drilled from your fabricator. In that type of comparison, the price from your fabricator should win hands-down.
Now, take the real cost of time spent trying to figure out exactly where a kitchen faucet and accessories should go ahead of time versus having the faucet there and simply holding it up for Ms. Jones to pick her spot. Add to that the number of faucet holes that are done incorrectly because they were cut ahead of time. Most of these can probably be attributed to the client changing his or her mind, but they are still technically wrong because the client is unhappy. The efficiency associated with drilling a hole ahead of time is quickly depleted when you look at it like this.
Kitchen faucets and accessories are usually more-complicated than bathrooms. When is the last time you messed up a faucet placement in the bathroom? Perhaps the most-efficient solution would be to drill the bathrooms ahead of time and the kitchen onsite; it’s likely worth a time study on your part to determine exactly what’s the best for your business.
While we’re at it, what’s the true cost of a seam? All of the fabricators I’ve worked with would bid jobs using the outside dimensions of each piece. An L-shaped piece with no seam would be bid on the outside dimensions of the L, meaning the cost of the waste is passed on to the consumer.
If Ms. Jones won’t accept a seam but still wants the job bid at the actual square footage, at what point does it make sense for you to eat the extra cost of the waste? That all depends on what it costs you to do a seam.
Here again, the cost of a seam goes beyond just the material and equipment cost involved. You have to factor in the true time it takes to pull and finish a seam. I’ve done them in as little as ten minutes; with rotten cabinets, I’ve also had a single seam take more than an hour. Charting your seam time to determine an average will give you a good idea of the labor cost involved.
You’ll also need to consider the number of times you’ve been called back to a job because the end user was unhappy with their seam (as well as the time involved with the fix). If you had to top polish a seam to make a client happy, the cost of that equipment and labor must also be included.
Don’t forget the number of pieces that had to be repaired or replaced because they were chipped when the seam was being pulled and got “bumped.” Those costs need to be considered as well.
When you’ve calculated your true cost-per-seam, it’s easy to determine how many square feet of stone you can give back to Ms. Jones without losing money on the deal. This gives you the knowledge to lower your bid on certain kitchen shapes and makes you more competitive.
The granddaddy of all up-front costs for a template/install company is the digital-templating system. It’s also the most-contentious process to talk about, largely for the very reason that many companies have no idea what it costs them to template a job. They’ve never considered it as a process that can be studied and improved. We’ll continue with that topic next month.
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.
©2010 Western Business Media Inc.