The Key to Faster Manufacturing and Assembly of Custom Furniture

With the demands of custom made furniture being delivered quickly to customers, modern furniture manufacturers are now having to work in fast paced environments. Not only are they trying to complete production of individual items of furniture as quickly as possible, but also trying to keep costs down by minimizing the amount of materials and resources required to complete a product. Additionally manufacturers are trying to reduce the amount of rework that is required to complete items of furniture that have faults or defects.

Furniture production drawings contain all technical information required for all manufacturing stages, from cutting and processing individual parts to final assembly and installation. So high quality technical planning of furniture is required in order to ensure efficient production with as few errors as possible.

TrueCADD stated in a previous post that utilizing CAD-based furniture drafting and 3D modeling can help increase production accuracy, reduce engineering hours and aid in faster manufacturing.

What are Furniture Shop Drawings?

Furniture shop drawings are technical drawings that a furniture company would use for manufacturing furniture. These technical drawings go into a great deal of detail to include drawings and written descriptions of all of the components for a piece of furniture and how all of the components of the furniture are to be assembled. These are as opposed to preliminary sketches or other rough drawings that may have been created to convey an idea for a piece of furniture, as opposed to drawings that are to be used for manufacturing of the furniture. These drawings are typically created with CAD software, such as AutoCAD, SolidWorks, or Inventor.

These technical drawings are created and developed by means of Computer Aided Design software. Such programs are widely known as CAD programs. The most known CAD applications are AutoCAD, SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor. These drawings are produced for the specific purposes of the furniture manufacturing process. Such purposes can be cutting and machining of wood, metal and other materials. Other purposes of the created drawings are assembling of parts, final installation of the completed furniture.

A standard furniture shop drawing package may include:

• Plan and elevation views
• Sectional and exploded views
• Material specifications
• Hardware and joinery details
• CNC-ready dimensions
• Bill of Materials (BoM)
• Assembly instructions

Furniture shop drawings are created for manufacturers from around the world. They are created to ensure consistency and to help to avoid errors in production of furniture.

Reducing Manufacturing Errors

The biggest advantage of using shop drawings for furniture production is that it helps to avoid errors. Inaccurate information whether it be measurement or production information results in poor production resulting in incorrect cut parts, poor quality joints and costly rework. This is not so with shop drawings as all information is clearly laid out and is accurate.

It will also highlight any design conflicts prior to manufacture allowing for amendments to be made to avoid any errors, minimizing the amount of errors, waste and lost time due to poor fit and finish.

Manufacturers using accurate shop drawings can:

• Minimize rework
• Reduce material waste
• Improve fit and finish quality
• Maintain consistency across products
• Avoid production delays

More manufacturing cycles are completed in the same time with greater efficiency.

Supporting Faster CNC Manufacturing

With today’s manufacturing techniques in the furniture industry mostly being based on CNC machines that are able to cut, drill, route and/or also shape parts and components, the accurate and correct shop drawings, that are provided to the manufacturer in due time and that include all the necessary details and production instructions for all the parts, will also facilitate the correct CNC programming very much.

The CAD-generated Furniture shop drawings are also very useful for the CNC manufacturing, as they can be easily integrated into the workflows of the production. This way the manual programming of the machines is avoided and an increased accuracy of the machined parts is increased.

In addition, more advanced 3D CAD designs also enable better nesting, thus manufacturers are able to make better use of the raw materials and prevent potential waste during production.

Here at 3D CAD modeling for furniture manufacturers we have been following the transition to digital furniture modeling for furniture manufacturers and how it can help to streamline the engineering process and to improve manufacturing.

Improving Coordination between Teams

A furniture manufacturer is a very complex organization consisting of designers, engineers, production departments, procurement departments and installers. All these persons and persons in these departments need to communicate with each other in order to be able to produce the furniture in the best possible way.

Working from the same approved technical description, all parties involved are assured that they are up-to-date and working from the latest version. This eliminates potential errors caused by degrees of interpretation.

Clear documentation helps manufacturers:

• Simplify revision management
• Improve production scheduling
• Reduce approval delays
• Streamline procurement planning
• Maintain quality consistency

All design information that is created for the furniture shop drawings is stored in digital CAD format and thus can be easily shared with required departments as well as with external vendors.

Faster Furniture Assembly

Assembly efficiency is another area of great benefit using the production of detailed furniture shop drawings. Without correct information as to the components of a product, items like furniture can take a long time to assemble.

The furniture shop drawings provide Assembly details. The information provided on these drawings will detail all components of the item of furniture and how they relate to each other, including all hardware details and the sequence in which each part of the furniture is to be assembled. These details will be used by the assembler of the furniture to accurately assemble the item(s) of furniture to the approved design. This will allow for rapid and accurate assembly of the furniture and will prevent problems that may arise from poor documentation.

This is especially important for:

• Modular furniture systems
• Knock-down furniture
• Office furniture
• Retail fixtures
• Hospitality furniture
• Custom millwork

The well-organized drawings for the disassembly of a product greatly help a manufacturer in solving problems related to the installation of the products and in increasing their productivity.

Supporting Custom Furniture Production

The issue of Customization in the furniture industry has become more and more relevant in recent years. Because of the needs of individual customers, many products are offered in custom dimensions, in individual colors and in individual configurations. This, however, is not easy to implement in production.

Shop drawings for furniture can be produced as CAD-based drawings which can easily be amended for individual pieces of furniture (e.g. dimensions, configuration details etc.). Even more advantage is created by using parametric CAD modeling. All related components and drawings are automatically updated when changes are made to required information.

This flexibility helps manufacturers:

• Handle custom orders efficiently
• Reduce turnaround time
• Improve client satisfaction
• Maintain production accuracy
• Scale customized operations

For the manufacturer of furniture, who produces a large number of different products, the detailed drawing and modeling provides a considerable competitive advantage.

Improving Quality Control

Furniture shop drawings support the quality assurance for the production of furniture and for the assembly of finished furniture. Quality control teams can use the technical drawings to check the dimensions and the materials as well as the single components for accuracy.

Clear technical documentation of shop drawings will enable quality control to check for accuracy of all components of furniture, as well as correct usage of materials prior to production commencing. Also, technical drawings will enable quality control to identify any errors that may have occurred during production, allowing for post production corrections to be made and re-installed accordingly.

Conclusion

Furniture shop drawings are very important for speeding up a manufacturer’s production, improving production accuracy and assembly accuracy. It helps in eliminating errors, in improving communication among production team, in optimizing CNC machining time and in facilitating faster furniture installation.

Furniture shop drawings are the backbone of technology-driven furniture manufacturers’ processes and work. They help them to work efficiently and competitively using shop drawings created with CAD software like TrueCADD and 3D CAD models. The main goal of these drawings is to increase work speed and accuracy of produced furniture, thus enhancing their quality.

Read our latest article: 3D CAD modeling for furniture manufacturers.