Entering CS Architectural Woodworking in Montgomery, Illinois, the visitor is met with what the company calls its wall of achievement and certifications. 

The minority-owned company has a lot of them. From its MBE certification that stands for minority-owned business and a VOSB certificate that refers to being veteran owned, and from its industry certifications such as the AWI Quality Certification Program and the FSC compliance certifications, the company has a lot to be proud of. And, that is even before you tour the factory or see pictures of its finished projects that are produced for a variety of clients such as hospitals, schools, fire stations, churches, and restaurants. 

“We are now one of the five minority licensed AWI QCP Firms in the country,” said owner Eduardo Salgado, who is both a minority and a U.S. veteran. 

Certificates are not just on walls. Some rest on a mockup of a shelving unit that is earmarked for use in the President Obama Presidential Center that will be built in Chicago. 

“All of these certifications accumulate, and we are able to create a really good palette that helps when we bid on projects that require a certain number of minorities or veterans,” said Josue Valdez, director of operations. “And then, when the architect comes in and they see we are AWI certified, we can be eligible for those projects. Thankfully, there’s not many of us who fit all those criteria. It really opens up a lot of doors for us, but at the same time though we don’t abuse it, we make use of it, we want our clients to continue working with us because they like our work, right, not just because we have those certifications.”
And  clients are coming back.

Working efficiently
For a busy, hectic factory, efficiency is critical. CS Architectural Woodworking is no different. To improve efficiency and clear bottlenecks, the company has adopted the Innergy software concept that helps to standardize and enhance the fidelity of communication in a shop’s production. 

The company started implementing Innergy in April of 2023 and they “drank the Kool-Aid” on the idea as soon as they started using it, Valdez said. 

“One of the main things that Innergy helps is to identify bottlenecks and ‘fill the plane,’” said Valdez. “With Innergy, we can plan our production week or month, and have the jobs fully filled out so that your productivity, really your throughput, and therefore your profitability, can increase.”

Every work area on the floor has a kiosk with a computer so that the workers can track time, work orders, and inventory management. “We’re still working through some of the details, but they can log in and see everything that we need to get done,” said Valdez.

The program is helping to improve product flow and help the employees to work together. A purchase order is put together and entered into Innergy, and every step along the way is tracked. Receiving, for instance, scans an inventory tag saying that the product has arrived, and that it’s ready for production. Assemblers can request that material, and the warehouse staff can bring that material to them when needed, or preferably before. Then, the company can track the material and have exact counts of how much material was used, and how much is left.

“It is huge for us because we know our production lead times, and we’re able to plan out and ideally be further ahead of the time,” Valdez added.

Self sufficiency 
To make sure that the raw material and components are ready when and where needed, the company makes an effort to be as self-sufficient as possible.  This is never more important than with laminates, as Salgado noted “probably 90% of the work we do is all laminate work.”

To be more efficient in this area, the company has a used Black Bros. laminating line. “Not many shops this size have their own layup capacity,” Salgado said. On this one particular day, a job was going through the Black Bros. laminate line that will eventually find a home with a hospitality client. 

“We’re lucky to have it,” said Salgado. “It helps with quality so we can guarantee that and scheduling. We like to make sure that our panels are balanced properly and scheduled accurately because sometimes, you can wait two weeks to get a laminated panel when we can do the layup ourselves and be cutting tomorrow.”

Valdez added that they can “control production that way, from start to finish and we are not relying on anyone else.”
The line can produce 30 laminated panels per hour or a sheet per minute. That might increase. Currently, the company doesn’t have a cold or hot press, so the panels have to be stacked for 24 hours for the glue to dry, but the company hopes to invest in a cold press in the near future.

The laminating line also gives them an opportunity to expand and improve their capabilities. On a hospitality job, after much experimenting, they were able to do a job that was relatively new to them. “These sheets have to be double thickness per specification,” said Valdez, pointing to a stack of finished panels, each with the requisite Innergy inventory/job tag. 

“They [workers] are putting down a sheet of laminate poly backer, and then they run one board of 11/16 particleboard that comes down and goes through the rollers and then they run another sheet of particleboard and then place the laminate on top, so they end up with essentially an inch and a half laminated board.”

Production area
These concepts extend into the production area. For example, on the assembly line, doors and hardware must be ready for installation. 

“We really operate having all our doors ready before the cabinets show up, because we figured out that this is a bottleneck. If you don’t have doors ready, your cabinets can’t go any further, so we have to make sure we get our doors ready, and then they make it into the assembly line. We try to have all the stations with all the tools necessary, all the parts that are necessary, to make sure we’re as efficient as possible.”

“Down the line,” Valdez added, “we have our wrapper, and the warehouse follows behind it, so we need to optimize the flow of the product.”