Cumberland Construction was founded in 1977 and is a family run business specialising in retail and interior refurbishments. Established by its present Managing Director, Mr Dave Park, the company has built a solid name for itself and is highly respected in the industry… their client retention rate speaks for itself. As a testament to this fact, they are still approved contractors for William Hill Bookmakers, their first client in 1977.

Their reputation for quality has been achieved through their ability to manage and deliver a product in an efficient and cost effective way within the ever changing constraints of the retail & interior contractor industry.

They are also keen to technology and realized that in order to stay competitive; they had to rethink their existing design and manufacturing system. So, the search for an alternative solution began…

They knew they wanted a system that was AutoCAD based to complement their existing AutoCAD software for 2D & 3D drawings. They produce one-off products as well as standard cabinets, so they also needed a system that would keep up with their unique demands, as their work is usually never the same.

As a member of the National Association of Shop Fitters, Mr. Park spoke to a number of Joinery companies about the software they used. To Dave’s surprise, many other members used systems that forced them to take parts into a second software package to complete the machining process. Since they were looking for a solution that allowed them to eliminate repetitive processes, they set out in search of a more streamlined solution, however Dave was told that such a solution did not exist.

Dave and his team decided to contact four different software companies and asked each of them to demonstrate their capabilities; one of them was Microvellum… a company that they had not heard of before and later found out was new to the UK market.

“We were very skeptical, but decided to participate in the demonstration and explain our unique needs to each sales person. Out of the four software companies reviewed, Microvellum was by far the most comprehensive solution and managed to ‘tick all the boxes’.” says Mr. Park.

The Joinery Shop

While they were impressed with the presentation, they were still apprehensive about the fact that Microvellum was not well-known in the UK. With a little research, it was not long before they realized that Microvellum was a well-established company and had a large user base in the US and other countries. They also realized that their local representation, Total CadCam Solutions, had all the tools, resources and support that they needed.

“Microvellum proved to us that with their custom libraries we could start producing from day one. They also proved to us that we could produce any custom one-off and send the code directly and simultaneously to our SCM and Biesse CNC machines… all from AutoCAD with 3 users who were once the bottle neck. This was a major enhancement to our operations, since we were used to choosing the machine we wanted to use, writing the programs and repeating the process for the second machine.” continues David.

Victor Sanchez, CAD Setter-out for Cumberland Construction says “Our process is more streamlined and we are producing more on both our machines than before. Microvellum is not only a replacement drawing tool for us, it’s a full manufacturing solution that has overhauled our production.”

“In the short time we have been using Microvellum; we have only scratched the surface of our new production and manufacturing capabilities.”