Company Structure
For a while, JUCA had a fairly conventional structure,
employing as many as 80 workers at a time. At some points,
JUCAs were made on an assembly line.
At other times, we had individual craftsmen build whole
JUCAs from the ground up. The system was good, but each
craftsman had to understand the inter-relationships and
assembly of the 117 parts that went into a JUCA at the time.
Training was long and extensive. Since turnover in
manufacturing is high, we found ourselves continually
training half our staff.
We needed 80 workers in the fall, but only needed 20 in the
spring. This contributed to the turnover problem.
We then changed everything, to use a lot of outside
manufacturing. About two-dozen
welding shops were on call to manufacture JUCAs. This had
several advantages for customers.
PRICES KEPT LOW
First, our overhead is reduced, especially in the spring, so
we can keep our prices down.
FLEXIBILITY ON FEATURES
Next, by having so many sources on call, we can distribute
sudden large orders amongst them so we can maintain our
guideline of shipping about nine working days after receipt
of order. This allows inclusion of custom or adjusted
features in some or all of the products of that sudden burst
of orders without making customers wait 16 weeks like most
custom products cause.
QUALITY IS VERY HIGH
When the craftsmen were employees who were assured of a
paycheck, borderline acceptance seemed to be the goal of
many of them--to just work hard enough not to get fired.
With our new system, they manufacture the products, then
bring them to our warehouse. At that point they are
carefully examined for deficiencies before they are paid.
If any are found, they must haul them back to their shop,
re-work the unit on their own time and then bring them back
again for re-examination. That seldom happens. They don't
want to chance all that extra effort on their own time, so
they make extra sure the products exceed our requirements
the first time. Excellent products result.
There is an interesting and informative anecdote regarding
this system. When all production was done by employees, a
certain sequence of procedures took about 20 man-hours to
perform. Our target was 19.2 hours for profitability. The
employees were paid hourly rates comparable to other welding
companies in the area. Apparently, when on our time,
efficiency of operation was not paramount in their minds.
Now that some of the same people are on a fixed sub-contract
as to payment rate, that same sequence of procedures takes
5.5 hours on their time! Interesting, eh? It has worked
out that we pay them approximately the same amount that the
employees used to cost us. THEY see it as getting almost
four times as much per hour, so they have great incentive to
keep us (and you) happy. Quality benefits.
Each shop "specializes" in one JUCA model. Certain shops
specialize in certain options, like arch-top units.
In recent years, the customers who ordered JUCAs
(over the Internet) have consistently asked for such very odd
units that outside sub-contracting shops have been almost useless.
(They were great when we only allowed very minimal customization of
the units, because then, the welding shops could build pretty much
the same assemblies over and over. Even after we allowed customers
to have more input, before the Internet, there was limited demand
for unusual features. But, having our site on the Internet, and
indicating there that we custom build each unit, has seemed to
bring out all the "odd" people! Since there seem to be
no other companies that are willing to manufacture custom-built
fireplaces and woodstoves and fireplace inserts, people from everywhere
have decided that we should build units for them. As it turns out,
around half of them either live in places like south Florida (where
they have no need for the sophistication of a JUCA) or they really
don't care if they get much heat (because they need a custom-built
fireplace to match some Mantel they bought at a garage sale).
This has been really frustrating for us. We feel we are wasting
enormous amounts of time in making these peculiar units for people
who don't actually want or need them, and the extreme uniqueness
of so many of them have made the sub-contracting concept
now impractical. (See our extensive whining in the PRODUCTION
SCHEDULE page).
A variety of problems have even interfered with this approach.
An important lead worker had very serious medical problems and
will never be able to work for us (or anyone) again. Other
employees did several damaging actions. All this has greatly
affected our effectiveness at efficiently assembling these units.
We are not sure what the net effect of that will be, except that we
are VERY far behind in building units already ordered.
The JUCA Home Page is at:
http://mb-soft.com/juca/index.html