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Considerations before moving a shop?

Leviathan

Aluminum
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Location
Canada
Hello all,

I'm looking for some feedback on your experiences or advice in regards to the complexities involved in moving your operation.

We are primarily a fabrication and machine shop and have seen solid growth over the last 3-4 years. If we keep growing at our current rate we are going to need to either spend significant money rearranging our existing facility or move to a new one sometime in the next 1-3 years.

Our current lease is not up for another 8 years but we have options for uses for the space even if we don't continue to use it as shop space so that is not a huge concern. The major negatives to the current location is low headroom (so no overhead cranes) and the way the building is (many separate areas, averaging 25ft wide) a lot of space needs to be left open for forklift traffic so that we can handle our large weldments and long parts. Being a structural fabricator our materials come in as long as 60ft and often finished parts are 20ft long or more. All of which currently needs to go through 15ft wide x 11ft high doors. So material handling is a major time sucker right now.

So we are now considering a move or a split of operations between 2 locations in the more near future as a real possibility. We are batting around the idea of moving our primary material processing (saws, CNC plasma, shear), fabrication (fitting and welding), and finishing (sandblasting, painting etc) to a new location set up much better for handling large stock and parts. Then work at moving the machining operations over when/if it makes sense, with the exception of our boring mill and 60x30 VMC the machines could likely be moved in a day.

Have any of you done something similar? Either a phased move or splitting your operations between two locations? Pros? Cons? Any cautions with the whole moving process in general? I would rather never do it at all...but I think it's going to happen sooner or later. Just a question of when, where, and how.

Thanks in advance for your insights.

Leviathan


Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk
 
When I moved to the new building last year, which is really only 30' away... it took about 4+ weeks, some a few longer to get back up running. Took the time to clean all the machines properly, maintenance, etc. Then time to set and get everything powered back up, run wiring, ventilation, etc, repaint the floors once all the machines were in, had a few delays on some components arriving late like the transformer.
 
Multiple locations can add a lot of extra expense and time delays, I'd try to avoid it until the company was so big it couldn't be avoided.

Could you sublease the space? It can bring it's own headaches, but the overall time sink should still be much less. Or the leaseholder could accept a reasonable buyout offer, if there's a good demand for space in your area.
 
Even just multiple buildings on the same lot can end up with much issues.
Someone in the other building is having issues, fighting something, and you in the other building have no clue for 3 hours 'till you wonder over there to check.
Of course with multiple people in each facility that is less of an issue, but none-the-less, you will Shirley have a few key personal that can't cover 2 facilities very well.

At least that's my experience.


----------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
Back in 1999 we built a new building and moved the entire plant in a week.

We had all the Electrical and Air Drops already in position prior to the move. At the same time we had already bought and installed 3 Press Brakes, a Turret, a Laser and installed and plumbed a new Air Compressor and system.. They were up and running before the move.

Once the move started we had all hands on deck, Electricians and some Installers from the factory for the other Turrets and Lasers. The physical move of machinery took 3 days and the Electricians hooked them up as they arrived. The total move was about 10 miles.

All totaled we moved from the old building 3 Turrets, 10 foot Shear, 8 Press Brakes, 2 Lasers, Horizontal Saw, Vertical Saw, 3 Tig, 3 Wirefeeds, All associated weld tables, 2 Bridgeports and a Leblond Lathe. The old Air Compressor was installed at a later date as the back up. Not to mention all the Office stuff.

It can be done...and I was wore out after that. I spent about 3 months planning everything and put together a schedule all involved could work to.

We only had 1 issue that held us up. The riggers bumped a servo motor on the Turret Y Axis. Their insurance covered the replacement. We were down for about 2 weeks on that piece of equipment.

Now the "junk" that was left in the old building took about 2 more months to move. The out of sight out of mind stuff. But we eventually got that moved to or disposed of.

During that year, which added to the challenge we took on enough work to triple our sales at the same time. It was organized chaos...I had a blast doing it.
 
Was at a shop that moved down the street. Did what we could ourselves with a towmotor and had riggers move the rest. Management also purchased 3 new machines which were up and running at the new facility before the move. Had minimal interruption in production.

Was involved last summer in moving most of a shop across state lines due to an acquisition on our end. 3 flatbed semi's worth of machinery. They were running parts the morning we packed up as long as they could. Numbered all machines, packed them up. Back at home I had made a CAD layout of the area with the machines. Chalked and markered up the floor with lines and machine numbers (floor was freshly epoxied in preparation). Morning the semis arrived, we moved machines in starting from the inside corner and moving toward the door. We were done by 4:30. Electrical, compressed air, and mist collector ducting took about 2 weeks after, partly due to our lack of manpower and need to keep other areas running and partly due to contractor scheduling.

Planning ahead made both moves that much faster. A good layout ahead of time was key. Make sure to allow space for all the incidentals in addition to the machines - electrical, compressed air, mist/dust collection, tooling, workbenches, storage, etc. - as well as walkways and/or towmotor paths. A flow diagram that doesn't look like spaghetti would be ideal, though it may be a pipe dream depending on your process.

Good luck!
 
Having moved several times, including just recently, I can tell you that you are wise to plan this far ahead. I had to move suddenly, and I was VERY fortunate that a place happened to be available at just the right time. It could've been a disaster.
Here's a few things I've learned:

A) Doors. First place I had really lacked in doors. It made for a real BAD time getting CNCs inside.

B) Power. Once place didn't have enough amps and no way to easily jump it up. I found out AFTER moving. I had to juggle machines to make things work.

C) Parking. I had a landlord that constantly griped about the truck in the parking lot. Ugh. Make sure you have parking for company and employee vehicles that doesn't have too much in the way of restrictions.

D) Finally, the landlord himself. Last one was a guy in his 80s. I should've known better. He decided to cash out before he died and sold the building. New landlord didn't like machine shops and I had to move.
 
My last employer took his time and dragged out the move over one year. He went from a larger building into a smaller one, about 3 miles away. Some machines were sold and new ones were purchased for the new building. Efficiencies in the newer equipment (swiss lathes) allowed for a smaller shop and savings on rent.

Let's just say the machines in the new building stayed awfully clean, us guys kept having to squeeze between them kept them wiped down nicely!
 
We are primarily a fabrication and machine shop and have seen solid growth over the last 3-4 years. If we keep growing at our current rate we are going to need to either spend significant money rearranging our existing facility or move to a new one sometime in the next 1-3 years.

Start doing now (and planning carefully) what you believe you'll have to do anyway within the next 1-3 years and avoid last minute panic. One building is better than several. If the new building can easily be enlarged when/if that time comes then even better.
 
One thing I overlooked when I moved shop location 8 years ago:
Inbound shipping rates. I moved about 5 miles across what is essentially the same town. But I am now about a block into a different ZIP code. Which UPS and FedEx classify as a rural zip (extended) ZIP code. So it costs more to ship to here. A one pound box costs $10 to get here instead of $8 that we were at the previous shop. And of course 20% * a couple hundred packages a month works out to be almost as much as the mortgage on the place. I was completely unaware of this.

The whole thing is crazy. We do enough shipping to get decently discounted UPS rates. But they won't touch the inbound rates. So it is almost always cheaper to send parcels my farm that is 10 miles from the nearest town, than it is to send parcels to my shop that is in an industrial park with endless delivery trucks all day every day.

Just something that was non-obvious to me.
 
Good thoughts so far. I am definitely of the same thinking that two buildings and/or two locations is definitely less than ideal. Especially from a staffing perspective as someone said. Like most shops I have less really skilled people than I could use. Having to have two locations would mean either finding more managerial staff or putting my production manager and myself at two separate locations. Also not ideal. It could work because he doesn't touch any of the machining stuff and I am not strictly required for the day to day fabrication stuff...but it would still introduce a level of time lag and fog of war to the daily state of operations.

Not a lot of large buildings in this area though. If I were to move everything I would probably want a building 26000ft2 at least (we are in a 13500ft2 space now). But there is also something to be said for having my machine tools separate from the fabrication stuff. Less grit and grime flying around. And surface finishing is another thing that is nice to have fairly separate, as long as the blasting and coating can all be done under the same roof.

Anyway I am working on a plan for whenever and wherever we move...that seems to be the key thing. Have a plan.

One other question for you all, when you have moved how much bigger have you typically gone? 25% more sqft 50% more, 100% more? Obviously space is costly...but moving ain't cheap either.

Thanks.

Leviathan

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk
 
We went from three buildings into one a few years back. I'd never go back to multiple buildings ever again. Staffing, maint., building efficency, weather, etc. are all factors left behind without looking back.

As far as size of your next facility, you need to be honest about your growth, and when you truely think enough is enough as far as how big you really want to get. Get a building a little bigger than than. This will prevent you from moving again in another 3-5 years after getting into your next building. I realize there is no crystal ball, but at least you'll be happy in the new building, and it'll be your best shot.
 
Excellent thread !
And excellent posts and answers- imho.

As others said very well, great detailed planning will help a move enormously.

Likewise, 2 locations or more - imho - ime - are neither necessarily good or bad as such.

I have had to do enormously complex difficult stuff in multiple locations.
So I developed methods to do so efficiently, cheaply, and easily.

It was not easy, and was not hard, but took hundreds of hours to get running well.
Once running well, it took minimal near-zero work per unit produced.

The good part about everything being in one place is you can go and fix any snags, using management-by-pointing (hopefully not yelling).
The bad part is that one tends to manage by overseeing rather than planning and delegating properly.

Some work is iterative by nature -- and will work much better in one location.
Yet even there the better planning pays off, a lot.
 
We moved years ago.

Almost had to move several years ago again when we took in a job too big for us...sort of.


The move had to be quick as we were having major landlord issues. We found and prepped new building for a month while we sorted and packed the old place. We brought what we could fit in pickups with each trip.
Move day we had a team of riggers show at 7am...by 10 they had 5 lowboys loaded and packed with machinery and contents of our shop.
By 2 they had us in the new place. Electrical hookups from power company had us delay up and running. Friends with shops that either did some of our work for us or allowed me to machine there place got us through.
It was tough and would not look forward to doing again.


One job we did had us teetering on the verge of a move.
Customers was pushing for it, but I was not moving to satisfy a customers wants. That is unless they put their money up.
That kinda shut them up allowing us to explain our plan to meet and exceed their needs as project grew. We developed a plan that showed how we could expedite the required amounts of product at every increasing stage.

500 units a month all done in shop with single shift. Run CNC and production 2 weeks, start sub assemblies. Week three all hands assemble and store, week three pack and ship. Storage unit for packaging materials. Start over.

1000 units a month- All production all month with 2nd crew at leased building, assembling and packing.

2000 units a month- All production all month, two shifts. 2nd crew in leased bay for assembling, 3rd crew at storage unit for packing, shipping and keeping packing materials.

If it went above, we would move and consolidate.


They pushed for more but later found out they could not keep up with larger orders and things settled in at 200-300 a month. Great for us as it allowed plenty of time for them and keep all our other customers happy.

I did find that even something as simple as sending a crew over to pickup packaging materials became frustrating. Long time spent, wrong materials picked up, bundles broke more and more.
 
We moved 25 years ago from leased quarters (four 945 ft² rent-a-cubicles paired on opposite sides of a parking lot). Rent after 15 years was up to $2700/mo including the dumpster. We had built bar carts for transporting stock across the way for sawing. Bummer in the rain and snow. Had 100A 208V 3Ø electric in each bay, near maxed out much of the time. Prices to own were absolutely unaffordable in that area, which was close to Washington DC.

But, we could afford to buy a 5000 ft² building on one acre 1700 miles away in Wyoming which was an economically depressed area after the 80s oil-patch crash. The place had 400A 480V 3Ø and overhead busways with disconnect boxes. In the 3 months prior to the move I made paper-and-balsa scale models of the machines to fit 1/4 inch grid paper, and nailed down the floor layout (which at the time seemed really huge). Most of the cords on the machines were already long enough to connect to the busways. The rest was just scheduling haulage, crane service at the destination, opening accounts for gas, electric and phone, and renting a house, all of which my wife organized.

From the riggers unplugging machines in the old shop to shipping our first parts made in the new shop was 13 calendar days in April 1993.

Moving across town or across the country, there's not that much difference. Make a big list of pros and cons and put realistic projected numbers next to them and consider it with an open mind. Yes, I stayed up late a lot. But if you can see far enough ahead that the advantages of moving are obvious, then you can and should do it—and afterward you'll know you can do anything.
 
To add one fairly important point: you can almost always make a business case for moving if you are going from renting to owning your premises. In the previous example the mortgage payment was only $680 versus a monthly rent of $2600 (oddly, the $100 for a dumpster didn't change). Since you will be your own landlord you'll need an additional layer of insurance, but that's just another operating expense. The real boost you get is from being free to expand and exploit the facilities to your benefit. Sure, it's a leasehold improvement which belongs to the landlord, but that's now you. The more you improve it, the higher the monthly rent—which your corporation now pays you, not the shylock who owned your former quarters.

Now obviously the improvement process (think of it as "value added," just like machining parts) can take a long time if you use only earnings and not borrowed funds, but there is an inexorable upward ratcheting effect in your favor, provided you take care of your stuff. The attached picture is of the art printed on one of the cakes at our 40th anniversary bash this past June, which was incidentally our 25th year after the move. The B&W photo was taken November 1992. To call that original building "minimal" is being kind! Moving from civilization to the middle of gravel and sagebrush would scare a lot of people away, but if you can envision what you might do in 10 or 15 or 25 years, and stick to that vision, you can come out pretty far ahead of the same period spent paying rent.

Your results may vary.
 

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We moved years ago.

Almost had to move several years ago again when we took in a job too big for us...sort of.


The move had to be quick as we were having major landlord issues. We found and prepped new building for a month while we sorted and packed the old place. We brought what we could fit in pickups with each trip.
Move day we had a team of riggers show at 7am...by 10 they had 5 lowboys loaded and packed with machinery and contents of our shop.
By 2 they had us in the new place. Electrical hookups from power company had us delay up and running. Friends with shops that either did some of our work for us or allowed me to machine there place got us through.
It was tough and would not look forward to doing again.

I hear you on that one. The last landlord was a real douche and things got so cantankerous we actually had lawyers involved. I wound up holding a few months rent hostage until I had everything secured. Once I got the last of my stuff out, I paid him, then I shut the water/gas/electricity off and let him wrangle with the utilities.
He was in his 80s and even then we nearly came to blows. New landlord is MUCH better.
 
Oldwrench,how do you get employees to move like that....my guys dropped out just because I moved across the river....I had a problem landlord ,too....half the mail was rent increases under the fine print in the lease....yeah I didnt read the fine print.....Had a stroke of luck,though......landlord had a overseas holiday when the lease was up,and his lackeys forgot to monster me to sign a new lease....so I pulled out while he was gone.....Was just cleaning up when he came back......he was always a pleasant guy,very businesslike,....said he was surprised I never told him....he could have helped.....All his tenants were friends....yeah...friends who made him rich.
 
he could have helped.....All his tenants were friends....yeah...friends who made him rich.

I heard that one too. "We could've worked it out." Yeah sure. The same guy who kept threatening to evict me and lock me out. Fact is, he didn't want a machine shop there.
 








 
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