Back to the Drawing Board – Drafting and Basic Integration

For a long time, integration has been the one of the prime buzzwords in manufacturing. Everybody wants systems that seamlessly unite purchasing, design, manufacturing, delivery and site work, methods that share and utilize critical information at every step. If you can eliminate the wasted time, wasted motion, wasted materials caused by the lack of integration, you’ll be much better able to serve your customers. You’ll also be a lot more competitive.

At Deluxe, we’ve made manufacturing integration a basic goal. Our state-of-the-art parametric drawing program provides significant advantages to customers, based on systems that make all relevant information part of the project at every stage. First, last and always, it’s really about integration.

We’ve built our system around the Vertex BD package. This sophisticated software puts a comprehensive library of parts at our fingertips. It also incorporates significant Building Information Modeling (BIM) capabilities – essential to the system’s strength and versatility. Select any part, and you’ve accessed all of its dimensional and construction attributes, including how it works with any other part in the database. When the draftsman goes to work, every bit of that comprehensive information becomes an integral part of the drawing.

From there, the information is key to total integration with Deluxe’s manufacturing process. Complete database information on any part makes it possible to develop an accurate bill of materials, parts list, and lumber cutting list. We can produce these documents for any completed drawing. We even cut the pieces in sequence relative to how the building will be manufactured and installed.

Another powerful advantage: the system perfectly defines and renders all wall panels, internal supports and other construction details. This speeds work both in the factory and on the jobsite. You set systems parameters and project parameters, and the drawings are exactly right one hundred percent of the time.

What’s more, every building module is clearly defined on the drawings we send to the site. This is one of the things our customers mean when they say that Deluxe engineering makes a big difference to them on the jobsite.

Here’s another element of our work that the drafting program handles really well. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) drawings are often difficult. It’s important to verify alignment of MEP elements between modules, and – within each module – to eliminate interferences with framing members or between MEP parts. With its library of preset objects, our system really makes MEP drafting much simpler and more accurate. Its features enable draftsmen easily to show piping, duct, wiring and many other details, always complete, correct to the specific project, and interference-free. Our engineering department draws much faster now than they did in 2D. And once again, this knowledge tool completely integrates MEP drawing with purchasing, manufacturing and site work.

To sum up, this is a system that produces drawings for any job fast and without errors. It adjusts to changes as quickly as the draftsman enters them. It’s scalable and it spots construction interference and helps the draftsmen get rid of it right away. Drawings are immediately available in plan, elevation, or a choice of three-dimensional views (including solid modeling, cutaways and wire framing) from any interior or exterior angle.

Most of all, it uses the database’s complete part information to make drawings and documents that encompass all the working information of the project, and tie that information directly into every manufacturing and installation phase from start to finish.

At that level of industrial management we’ve gone far beyond buzzwords. When it comes to manufacturing integration, this is the real thing.

Keeping things simple: How getting the system-built method right cuts time and confusion

If you spend time talking to people who are really knowledgeable about multi-family construction, you’ll hear again and again that stick-built construction is an old way of doing business. Even some people whose business is still mostly conventional construction will tell you this.

But that’s not the same as saying that every modular building manufacturer has what it takes to make the most of system-built technologies and management methods. Unless the business is structured specifically to address system-built multi-family construction, the advantages will not be what the builder and others in the process hope for.

To be direct about it, Deluxe has the multi-family gig down. That’s not our language; that’s the way it was put by a builder for whom we recently finished a major project. This concept – construction simplified – helps define the parameters under which we operate. We bring together high-tech manufacturing methods with refined project management staffing and methods to control time and complexity on the job site.

The key is integrating the manufacturing and the site construction processes. We’re staffed that way, with project managers, engineering project coordinators, and project administrators. These experts get involved from the design and planning stages, gearing up every job for maximum speed and efficiency. Helping make the most of our advanced manufacturing technologies, they eliminate almost any bottleneck before it happens. Their involvement continues through the factory to the jobsite phase to support rapid, trouble-free setting and completion of the project.

By their nature, systems methods are leaner - builders need less staff. They’re also embracing it because it radically cuts the overhead required to manage all the subcontractors. When you get rid of the extra time, extra site work, and extra staffing with what’s accomplished in the factory, you’re way ahead of the game.

What’s more, true integration between factory and site makes the process predictable in ways that are not possible either in the stick-built environment or with other, less evolved modular approaches. Working with the builders, we set rigorous schedules and control the process, maintaining those schedules through to completion. There are no weather delays in the manufacturing process, and no delays resulting from problems with large numbers of subcontractors.
This is where the comparison really stands up against stick-built or less refined modular methods: We don’t sell boxes, we build projects. The system-built approach to multi-family projects is all we do. We’ve been doing it longer than anyone else. We’ve developed the ability to make the transition seamlessly between the factory and the field.

This business model doesn’t eliminate performance problems, but it absolutely minimizes them.

How much simpler can you make it?