Page 2 - APRIL-2019_SlipperyRockGazette

2|April 2019
Premier Surfaces
Slippery rock GAzette
Continued from page 1
“It’s like The Artisan Group on steroids, because we truly have access to everyone’s information. We literally open our books up, and I can see everything everyone is doing and how they are doing it. It’s a shared interest and incum- bent upon all of us to get better, together. Another thing is that there’s a certain competitiveness to it, because when the numbers come out, I’m shooting for number one between the groups.”
20-20 Foresight
“Years ago, when Mitch Makowski set up the company, he had the foresight to bring in Ed Hill,” continued Sadwick. “Ed is a private consultant, and for many years has helped the industry with Synchronous Flow. (Note: Ed Hill is a contributor to the SRG, and his Synchronous Flow is a business operations system that brings control and stability to an otherwise difficult process.) This pretty well set us up, and we have been very religious with it. To me, this has been our manufacturing differentiator. We have a very
controlled work flow, and when we call customers with a measure date, we also give them an instal- lation date of seven days after. We can do this because we operate to Synchronous Flow’s beat of the drum.
“How does it work? Well, first, you have to be disciplined and be- lieve in the system. You then need to know what your capacity is, where your bottleneck is, and what the demand is. Then, once you know where the bottleneck is and what your throughput is, you run the jobs accordingly through the system, so that one day you don’t have 60 jobs and the next day 15. Each production stage has its own check point, if you will.
“So starting out with the job first coming in, we cannot put it into the system until we have all the information needed to produce it. This takes training our design- ers and sales team as well as our kitchen and bath dealers. Measure techs then go out to measure, and many times things have changed by the time they show up. Not only do we have to know that, but the dealer needs to know that.
Measurements then come back for programming, and we make sure that the design team gets involved when laying materials out. To be frank, we don’t send out many approvals. Of course, if one of our dealers requires it, we will of course provide it.
“It’s from here that we start our first step in Synchronous Flow in the design programming stage.
The bookmatched, full height backsplash and countertops are fabricated in Galloway Quartz, from Cambria’s Coastal Collection.
The job then works its way through the seven days, allowing each stage a certain amount of time to do its job. This is all set up in Moreware with auto triggers, and once we set our install date, it trickles it all back telling us when each step has to be done. This is the constant drum
beat that we march to. When we are slow, we keep the drum beat consistent by shortening hours. When we are busy, we keep it con- sistent by lengthening hours.”
Can Synchronous Flow help when another location has too much work too close to a deadline? “Yes, it can,” continued Sadwick.
“This happened with one of our other facilities this year, where for a seven week span they had more orders than they could han- dle for their capacity. So we got their drawings on a Monday, and by Wednesday we were shipping an additional 800 square feet on a truck to their location. We were doing our work, and supplying them at the same time. It wasn’t a big money maker for them ship- ping from Rochester, but it saved the account, and it showed the extent of the resources within the entire Premier family. It did, how- ever, throw our Synchronous Flow off, but we were able to catch up with predictability by the end of the week.”
People — the Heart and Soul of Any Company
Anyone can buy equipment, anyone can sell slabs, but it re- ally comes down to your people, doesn’t it? Sadwick’s team of sales, design, office and craftsmen, at any time, totals over 110, and manages to put out 30 to 40 kitch- ens per day.
Please turn to page 7
The Shower surround and seating in this master bath features Cambria Oakmoor, and sits atop a cultured marble floor pan base. The vanity is done in Cambria Ramsey with an integrated Corian sink, all fabricated and installed by Premiere Surfaces.