Proslat is a manufacturer of garage organization systems, which include slatwall organization, garage cabinets, and tool chests. Proslat
Reshoring manufacturing jobs is something everyone keen to see industry thrive in North America hopes will happen. It’s not easy, and it’s not guaranteed to be successful, but those who make a solid investment in both technology and business development planning demonstrate that it can work. Valleyfield, Que.-based Proslat is an example of a company that is succeeding.
Identifying the Opportunity
Proslat is a manufacturer of garage organization systems, which include slatwall organization, overhead racks, motorized storage lifts, manual storage lifts, garage cabinets, and tool chests.
When the company was founded in 2010, it specialized in the design work for the cabinets and outsourced all of its manufacturing to China.
“At the time, we would kit together assemblies here and ship them out,” said Eric Letham, company founder and president/CEO. “When we first considered manufacturing in North America in 2017, we just didn’t have the volume yet to justify it. Even today, it’s still a gamble, but I knew what I wanted to achieve in doing so.”
For Letham, identifying the opportunity was key.
“Currently in the cabinetry business, you have Chinese product, which is sometimes very good, but there’s always an asterisk next to that. You can get some good stuff but also bad. And that product is not going away. Those companies will always go for my customers. Meanwhile, our competition in North America isn’t as automated in its production as it could be, using people to move product from station to station and using manual welding processes, for example.”
Letham likens his place in the market to selling a Mercedes—a product that can compete with higher-end cars while arriving at a price point that is a little bit lower so that those people in the market for, say, a Honda or Acura will consider it.
“Our competitors in North America make a good cabinet, don’t get me wrong, but they make 80 cabinet boxes a week with 30 employees. I make 80 a day with seven. Yes, I had to spend money on technology, and yes, it will always need maintenance. But the efficiency I have is second to none.”
Automated Cutting and Bending
The first step in the manufacturing process at Proslat involves a Prima Power PSBB line, which processes blank sheets into ready-bent, high-quality components automatically. PSBB stands for punching, shearing, buffering, bending.
Material flow can be arranged in flexible ways: to transfer parts directly to automatic bending; to balance the different time requirements of bending and punching/shearing; to exit material from the system and to bring new material into it. The flexible and versatile buffering function ensures that optimum operation in terms of manufacturing cost and throughput time can always be chosen, whatever the manufacturing task at hand. Flexible buffering ensures optimal operation of integrated machines.
The first step in the manufacturing process at Proslat involves a Prima Power PSBB line, which processes blank sheets into ready-bent, high-quality components automatically. Prima Power
The company has a Prima Power EBe 0520 electric press brake to bend any parts that are too small for processing on the bending machine. Once the sheet has been cut, punched, and bent, parts are automatically welded and then sent along a conveyor to the company’s paint booth. The company works primarily in 20- to 14-ga. cold-rolled steel and 16-ga. stainless.
“Prima is a big part of what we do, taking us from sheet metal to a fully bent part quickly,” said Letham. “More or less, one guy starts the shear/punch/bend process and it generally just runs by itself. Then my one guy runs the press brake, puts the parts into the weld cell under the paint line. I have one person in the robotic paint booth for quality control. I can go to a fully welded and painted cabinet box using two or three people. There’s not a lot of businesses that can do that, and that’s the key to our business.
“The name of the game is speed,” he continued. “You only get so many hours a day and then you start looking at it and saying, ‘If I don’t have speed, I’ll have shifts.’ If you talk to any manufacturer about their day shift versus night shift, the day shift is where the profit is; the night shift is just trying not to break too many things, and the quality of labour is not there.”
The company currently runs four days a week with 10-hour shifts, but Letham said he’d like to progress to three 12-hour days with two shifts.
“That way, we run six days a week, but everyone has more time off. That’s where our vision is going. No overnight shift,” Letham explained.
Currently, Proslat will run the PSBB unmanned overnight for large orders.
“We monitor it on camera to make sure it’s running OK,” said Letham.
The company has quickly found that some parts are a challenge for the machine to process, though.
“There are some parts that we punch and cut but are too small to process on the bender, which is why we have the brake, and why we have now invested in a laser that will be installed shortly,” said Letham. “Interrupting the flow of the PSBB for those smaller parts that don’t roll as well and that the bender finds difficult to pick up takes away from the value of the system.”
The laser will be a Prima product as well—a flatbed laser with load/unload capabilities.
Once the sheet has been cut, punched, and bent, parts are moved along a conveyor to be automatically welded and then sent to the company’s paint booth. Prima Power
“We aren’t fully automating the laser,” said Letham. “Even if I had two brakes running side by side, I can’t bend as fast as that laser will cut, so I’m still way ahead of the curve for product.”
Balanced Flow
Letham is trying to get to a place where he can set realistic stretch goals for production with essentially the same number of people in the shop.
“What I’m trying to get to is a place where I can say to my team, ‘This week, your budget on steel is 100,000 lbs. If you guys hit that, everybody gets a bonus,’” said Letham. “Having a smaller group, it’s easier to be flexible and adapt to the challenges of different product, but you have to be able to pivot quickly without losing quality.”
One efficiency Letham has found is keeping the production line very short. Parts come out of the PSBB or from the press brake via a conveyor to a weld cell that is right next to it. From welding, the conveying system takes it a few feet away, where it joins a conveyor system to enter the paint booth. From the paint booth, the parts are presented to another conveyor line at a height that makes assembly comfortable for employees.
“It can be challenging when you want to add some more technology to such a tight line, but we did put enough space to move,” said Letham. “For instance, we had been riveting the drawers, but the rivet guns would break, we’d drop them, it was slow. The PSBB takes about 35 seconds to bend a drawer. The welder takes about 40 seconds. We’ve removed a bottleneck. The difference of five seconds can create a backup, but then we’ll run a shell that will balance out that time difference.”
In some cases, assembly ends up being the bottleneck, but the company has team members in shipping that it can move for the short term to address that. The only specialist the shop really needs is the person running the PSBB and weld cells.
Automation Specialists
That specialist, however, is critical to keep a shop running at its most efficient. Proslat was lucky enough to find the perfect candidate for the position in Thomas Fournier, just as it was planning the installation of the PSBB two years ago.
“He just has this desire to learn,” said Letham. “We sent him to training, and even the Prima technicians that come to us sometimes say, ‘Just ask Thomas.’ He’s that good. It’s essential when you’re working with technology to find that one person.”
Fournier maintains and programs all the robots and the PSBB. He came straight out of a CEGEP course in robotics.
“I’m playing with machines and robots all day as part of my job,” said Fournier. “It’s a fun thing to do.”
The company has a Prima Power EBe 0520 electric press brake to bend any parts that are too small for processing on the bending machine. Soon this will work in concert with a stand-alone laser cutting machine to manage pieces too small to be easily managed on the PSBB. Prima Power
Fournier received training from Prima on the PSBB and the EBe brake.
“A week isn’t long enough to learn everything on these machines, but the Prima team has been good with service when I’ve had questions,” said Fournier.
“Usually, I try to figure out the issue first, but you can’t waste too much time, so I contact Stephine Holloway, the local service coordinator, and he talks me through it,” he continued. “So as far as the Prima line goes, our efficiency went way up quickly because we obviously had a lot of challenges initially. It can be fairly specific on what it wants for nesting parts and how they should be presented. If you’ve never run a machine like this before, you can’t expect it to run perfectly immediately. Similarly with the EBe, understanding all of the axes and managing crashes—that was tricky. But of all our parts, only one has been a challenge. Any other part that we bend comes out perfect every time.”
The main challenge Fournier has been tackling is determining how to most efficiently move stock through the machine. Because the PSBB is not fed by a tower, he wants to make sure that sheet stock is efficiently processed without creating bottlenecks elsewhere.
“It’s a hard thing to balance,” he said. “You always think you’ve figured it out, you make a change, and your efficiency stays the same.”
This should be simplified when the new laser is installed and the press brake moves next to it, creating an alternate flow for smaller and narrower parts that are problematic for the bender. This is a natural progression for a shop; a fiber laser is the ideal choice when cutting smaller, more intricate parts.
“Right now, we end up with a backup of small parts on the PSBB, which is not efficient,” said Fournier. “The new laser will create efficiencies for the smaller parts. Smaller brackets and similar items will be ready for me as needed in production, which was difficult to manage when they were being prepared on the PSBB.”
In terms of efficiencies, though, Fournier knows that he can produce more on the PSBB in the future.
“We are consistently running the system at a feed rate between 50 and 75 per cent,” he said. “Even then, it sometimes idles because I’ve built up a surplus on the tables. I could do more, but I don’t want to be too far ahead. It’s more important to balance the line.”
Retail Advantage
Letham is keen to see as little work-in-process on the floor as possible.
“That’s why I didn’t invest in a Night Train system,” he noted. “I want material to be either in sheet metal form or I want it painted and packaged for shipping. We have a very small section on the floor where we have doors that are prepaint ready just sitting there because we’re waiting to determine what colour they are going to be. If we make a design tweak, we don’t want to be sitting with a lot of unusable inventory.”
Letham is constantly looking for the next way in which he can solve a bottleneck, from investing in the PSBB line, to getting top-of-the-line robotics for welding and part lifting, to a Swiss paint line, and, lastly, a very efficient packaging machine at the end of the line.
Proslat now looks ahead to becoming the first garage cabinetry manufacturer to go direct to retail. The company is opening up six stores this year, with locations in Scottsdale, Ariz.; Dallas; Boca Raton, Fla.; Columbus, Ohio; Las Vegas; and Long Beach, Calif.
“Our focus is in the southern U.S. because of the very strong car culture there,” he explained. “We just know we have the customers in those areas to make it work.”
It’s this expansion that makes the Valleyfield operations so important.
“I know what’s coming down the line,” said Letham. “And if we do our job right, we’ll be the Apple Store of garage organization. By opening our stores, we’re able to have our install services right out in the field. Our goal is to become part of the new home. As you’re building a home, we can put a slatwall in the garage. It puts our brand in there, and suddenly people might think of our cabinets and toolboxes, knowing that they’ll be professionally installed by people who understand their space.”
Ultimately, maintaining quality levels in its products is what will help Proslat not only reach this audience but also keep them coming back for more. The Valleyfield operations are proving that it is possible, at the right price point, here in North America.
Editor Robert Colman can be reached at rcolman@fmamfg.org.
Proslat, proslat.ca
Prima Power, primapower.com
