Cabineo Case Study: Select Millwork

A SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS STORY

The Great Recession presented challenges to most
woodworking businesses in one form or another, and Select
Millwork in Irving, Texas was no different. After founding
their company in 2004, business partners Paul Gause and
Billy Harrington were faced with some difficult decisions
when the project pipeline started to dry up for them in
2010, including being forced to make a drastic reduction in
their workforce. The company’s survival through the
recession and its success in the subsequent years was due
“in equal share to the decision to purchase a CNC router,
and to hire a lean-practices consultant to help identify
opportunities to improve efficiencies”, says Harrington.
Both decisions represented a major financial investment at
a time when doing so was particularly difficult, but they are now paying dividends for the company. In 2018, Select
Millwork’s decision to adopt the Lamello Cabineo connector
as their primary assembly method has maximized the
usefulness of their router and is right in line with their
philosophy of continually improving and streamlining their
processes.

CHALLENGES

Historically, Select Millwork built their cabinet boxes using
the screw-and-glue method, but they were finding it
increasingly difficult to remain competitive when they could
only assemble two cabinets per hour per assembler.
Adopting a new doweling system in 2016 was a significant
improvement in speed and allowed them to double output
to three to four cabinets assembled per hour per man. However, there was a capital investment required:
“We spent $50,000 to buy a specialized
machine and paid to get extra software support
and router bits” , says Gause. Then, as it turned
out, those assembly efficiencies were not only
expensive but also short-lived and lost to
software integration challenges and the
chronic unreliability of the machinery which is
required to make the precise dowel joinery
work correctly. Additionally, the specialized
manufacturing process for the doweling
method required a dedicated machine operator.
A new solution was needed, quickly.

SOLUTION

One day in 2018, Paul’s son David was
browsing the Häfele website looking for a better
assembly method when he came across the
Lamello Cabineo connector system. David focused
his attention on Cabineo, researched it, and saw
enough potential to request a sample pack from
his local Häfele representative. The ease of the
screen-to-machine software integration that
Select Millwork experienced using Cabinet
Vision also helped sell the team on the process. A
proof-of-concept build of a few cabinet boxes
confirmed that using Cabineo would solve their
production challenges. “It reduced the
manufacturing component down to a onemachine
process” , says Gause, “and the
software and machinery programming became much
simpler.” The material thickness issues that
plagued their previous method were sidestepped
due to the design of Cabineo, and the
assembled joints were nearly twice as strong as
their former method. Additionally, getting started
with Cabineo required only minimal initial
investment: “We spent about $1,000 to get
connectors, extra software support, and router
bits to start using Lamello [Cabineo]” , says
Gause.

RESULT

By implementing Cabineo connectors, Select Millwork now
produces five to six cabinets per hour per person using
Cabineo, an average 60% improvement in
throughput from their previous method. Another huge
benefit is that they were able to transform the nowunnecessary
dowel machine operator into an
assembly team member.
Reallocating personnel, in combination with
the improved efficiencies by using Cabineo, has more
than doubled output without a single new hire, and
also effectively lowered their overall labor cost by 25%.
Paul Gause sums up their experience using Cabineo:
“The ‘one-machine’ process of Cabineo has greatly
reduced the time involved for our entire building
process, which allows us to be profitable in a
cost-competitive market”.

In order to survive the Great Recession, Select
Millwork was forced challenge their old way of
thinking and doing. Now those same survival
instincts are helping them to prosper. By always
looking for ways to improve their manufacturing
process, they have been able to maximize the
potential that the Lamello Cabineo connector
system offers: the ability to do much more with
much less!