One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Early in my career, I worked at Thomasville Furniture. I supported the veneering operations. We were building a new plant for the plywood pressing operations. I was asked to design and purchase a storage system for the heavy wood blocks that were used to create shaped plywood in a special press.

I had two critical problems to solve:

1.      Improve the organization of the blocks and make them easy to find.

2.      Reduce the effort and safety risk of moving the blocks into and out of the press.

In the existing veneer plant, the blocks were stored on pallets on the floor. When needed, they were carried to the press and slid into place. The blocks weighed 40 to 400 pounds. The heaviest block was used to create bed canopies. All other blocks weighed 100 pounds or less. One person carried the lighter blocks to the press. Four people carried the bed canopy blocks. Clearly this wasn’t a safe practice. I knew I could improve this situation.

The first thing I did was follow the process in the old plant. I walked with the operators and helped them carry blocks to the press. They were heavy, bulky and difficult to transport safely. They were stored all over the plant. Finding them often took more time than carrying and sliding them into the press.

I was given a set amount of space in the new plant. I wanted to design a rack system to store blocks in any location on the rack, to allow for flexibility. I quickly realized that if I did this, I would need a rack that was five times bigger than the space I was given. What could I do, I wondered?

Then I had an idea: create a special rack location for the heaviest block. This location would have rollers to make it easier to move the block into and out of the rack. The rest of the shelves in the rack had wire decking which was more than adequate to safely slide the lighter blocks into and out of the rack. Using this concept, I was able to store all of the blocks into the allocated space.

Now I needed to create a system to safely move the blocks from the rack to the press. Working with a material handling vendor, we designed a cart with rollers on it and a front plate to keep the blocks from falling off. One worker was able to take the cart to the rack, slide the block from the rack to the cart, and use the front plate to keep the block in place. Once the cart was rolled to the press, the front plate was lowered and the block was moved into the press safely and with low effort.

We established a procedure for one person to safely handle any block, except for the bed canopy block. For that, we required two people to work together. This project taught me the valuable lesson that you have to understand the full problem to be solved before coming up with a solution. One size doesn’t fit all.