Toll Brothers imported an automated panel line commensurate with their luxurious homes, or so they expected. Perhaps because the European economy was ailing in the early 1990s, Randek from Sweden, like the Makron company from Finland before them, offered Toll an excellent deal. But Randek was an eminently worthy partner, then and now 30 years later, having grown their automation expertise by working closely with prefabricated housing producers beginning in the post-World War II recovery. However, the Randek line was designed around smaller and more repetitive housing units, not Toll’s larger and more customized units. But it offered features that Toll hoped would greatly enhance their panel output.
Randek employed the same extrusion process employed by Makron (for details, see “Wall Panel Technology, Part VI: Panel Equipment Innovations”). However, to keep the line moving, window and door components were built ahead and stored in compartments stacked vertically. To run with fewer stops and starts, shorter panels were grouped together and built adjacent to one another between continuous top and bottom plates, which were sawed apart at the end of the panel line.
Toll’s component operations, aggregated under a wholly owned subsidiary called Toll Integrated Systems (TIS), exclusively served their building divisions in the northeast. Their only plant at the time was located north of Philadelphia in Morrisville, PA, just across the Delaware River from Trenton, NJ. While every associate in the field or in the plant worked for the namesake brothers, Bruce and Bob Toll, TIS management was often overpowered by high-level executives in the home building divisions who demanded more output than the plant could produce. And Toll’s modus operandi was loading their models with options, the total cost of which could exceed the base price of the model. During the 1990s, Toll’s architecture office across town lacked 3D rendering software and would send TIS floorplans of one-off options without integrating them into the main body of the house. This practice greatly complicated TIS design work and lengthened lead times. Because of the northeast’s notoriously complicated permitting process and the complexity of the designs, Toll had a difficult time predicting when component deliveries would commence. As a result, when all issues were resolved, TIS was compelled to put orders into production immediately, and upon completion, panels often languished in the weather before erection, reflecting poorly on TIS.
Both Toll and Randek worked together through the remainder of the 1990s to maximize output, but finally decided that major upgrades were necessary to keep up with the doubling of workload that had occurred during that decade. In 1999, a new line was installed in Morrisville and the existing line was shipped to a new plant in Emporia, VA. Fortunately, not long after installation of the upgraded line, Toll management protected their very large investment by bringing onboard Brian Hunter, who had 20 years’ experience in automotive manufacturing. Brian quickly assessed the opportunities to not only improve the line’s throughput but also its output quality.
Toll’s high-end buyers continued to expect high-quality interior finishes, necessitating uniformly straight studs. Even though TIS paid a premium for higher-quality Douglas Fir studs from the west coast, they still had to develop a culling process that did not slow down the line. This led to the provision of a skate-wheel-based work table were straightness and defects were assessed. Those that passed inspection were gravity-fed into a trough and power-conveyed into the extruder upon demand. The studs were then automatically clamped into position, while the top and bottom plates were incrementally advanced, and plate-to-stud nailing was initiated. This Toll-developed infeed system replaced the standard overhead conveyor and dedicated the operator to delivering the next round of top and bottom plates and window and door components. But this was just one of many such improvements that were made to enhance productivity.
In 2008, Toll recruited Keith Fell as Director of Manufacturing, who had spent 35 years managing plants inside and outside the component industry. Among the improvements he initiated were the elimination of routing by precutting sheathing and implementation of just-in-time production by closer coordination with the field. These enhancements and others shortened lead times, reduced finished goods inventories, and lessened the time panels were exposed to the elements, thereby improving quality.
Toll’s experience highlights the advantage of bringing outside experts into component plants who aren’t hesitant to add offline enhancements to automated systems, and to engage suppliers to accommodate such adaptations. In the long run, this type of supplier–user cooperation paves the way for more productive automation in the future.
Next Month:
Panel Automation from American Suppliers
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