Brindabella Kitchens increases output whilst reducing staff, overtime, and floor space!

 Brindabella Kitchens started business in 1994 and was initially a small-scale business. Ben purchased the company in 2005 and continued its growth by increasing his customer base.

 Over the years the business grew into a medium-sized manufacturing business specialising in producing high-end custom-made kitchens for the private sector and the full house fit-out for project home builders including – kitchens, laundry, butlers’, pantries’, vanities, and outdoor kitchens to meet increasing demand.

 Main clients are the home renovation market, home builders, architects, and interior designers.

 Brindabella Kitchens were faced with a changing market along with large growth in the project home market, builders’ demand, and faster time frames.

 With the local housing market seeing a boom in development in recent years, builders were on the look for reliable manufacturers that they could use across their housing development portfolio. Brindabella Kitchens were keen on meeting this demand as well as existing ongoing work.

 Although increasing demand was being met initially through short term solutions, this led to other challenges and higher costs, which left Brindabella Kitchens entering a vicious cycle. With further investment in factory space, employing more staff in manufacturing, increase in overtime costs and purchasing additional machinery, as a result, Brindabella’s profit margins were decreasing dramatically, and this problem had to be resolved.

 Ben started investigating the best solution for his business and after considering a few options Brindabella Kitchens highlighted the following reasons for choosing Wood Tech. 

• One supplier to provide a full turnkey production factory.
• Old fashioned personalised service – like a family-run business.
• Strong and trusting long term relationship.
• Fast backup service.
• Excellent support from Wood Tech technicians on machine operator training.
• Easy no hassle phone support direct from machine operator to technical service team providing less breakdown time.
• Ability to bring new innovative machine and production concepts

 In 2017 when Brindabella Kitchens reached out to Wood Tech to help with their production issues.

Objective

 The main objectives for the new project are:

• Increase production and efficiency
• Less factory floor space
• Fewer machine operators
• No overtime

Solution

 Since the factory had reasonably high ceilings the suggestion of using the Barbaric multi-level board system was a great choice. This allowed them to use the high ceilings (space above the machines) to manage the board stock as well as automatically load the nesting machine. The efficiency was significant as freeing up floor space saved the movement of board stock and access for forklifts. With this solution, Brindabella saved over 500m2 of floor space.

 The next machine we recommended, linked to the board storage system, was the new Anderson GS Linear Motion Nesting Line. We stated that this single machine would output the same amount of m2 as the 2 existing nesting machines. Although they were sceptical, in the end, they admitted the results were amazing.

  Going from two nesting machines, two edge banders and 4 staff machine operators all doing overtime every day they reduced their staff by 75% in this area and had just the 1 machine operator with no more overtime required. Crucially the output they had during the week, on a Saturday and with excessive overtime was now the same as 8hr shifts during the week.

 Brindabella Kitchens told us that the biggest takeaway from the use of these machines was the reduction in staff, reduction in overtime costs, and reclaiming of factory floor space which ultimately led to a dramatic increase in profit margins.

 Wood Tech, they said were “woodworking machinery” specialists who resolved all the problems discussed in the brief which led to more production output with significantly fewer costs giving them the confidence to approach any future projects knowing they can complete them using the best equipment and support.

 Based on our discussions and strategic objectives together we agreed on the following solution: