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
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