Our dog beds will soon be in new premises.

Our new premises are soon ready. In a way it has been very quick and easy so far. We only bought the land just over a year ago and we have got a big 30×18 meter building on it now. We are really going to enjoy making all the waterproof dog beds in there as it’s all fresh and lovely. There are no machines in there yet, but we have till now made sure the painting is done in just the colours we want (quite girly!!). The big question is of course the lay out as we now know exactly how the manufacturing process is undertaken. We have a large work shop put inside the main building and we have put the doors in the right positions in order to make the work flow perfect for when materials go in, get worked on and go out for collection by the courier. The storage part is not our first priority as we will simply have to put all our stuff in first and then sort out the interior of the work shop.

As most of the “furniture” will be built in and fitted, we won’t be able to move it round later unless we absolutely have to. So it is a bit of a thinking job to plan out how all the machines will be situated. We will need to make the flow perfect so that when we make the covers they should end up in the right physical place and be ready to use for the luxury dog beds right there where they are finishing if that makes sense. We have spent time with SMAS, Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Services, who are very good at looking at factories in terms of what they call “lean manufacturing”. This is all about not wasting  time or space or too many steps for the staff. It’s amazing how much time is wasted if someone makes three unnecessary steps every half hour. Over a year of making beautiful dog beds the wasted steps add up in wasted time. Further, both health and safety and ergonomics come in to play. With the great opportunity of a newly built place, we can really go over the top with making work conditions great. Our products are fairly heavy and we make a lot of them, therefore there must not be any risk of repeated awkward movements, which will add up to an injury in time.

As seen on this link, it is a bit of an art to put the luxury dog beds together and it is therefore very important that we avoid any problems with bending or lifting.