Drafting Display Fixtures and Visual Merchandising for Leading American Retailer
The Client - Premier Custom Millwork Provider
Based in the United States of America and recognized for over ten years as the foremost custom millwork provider, the company focuses on display fixtures and visual merchandising for retail outlets. The client is capable of both design work and manufacturing.
Their dedicated and passionate team has assisted the company in growing, offering a specialized set of skills to create solutions that exceed customers’ expectations. The company has built a highly successful specialized business that creates, builds, and delivers high-quality fixtures for the retail market.
The company consistently improves its offerings and provides in-house engineering, project management, manufacturing, assembly, shipping, and installation. Making use of over 100,000 square feet of factory space, the company offers in-house wood, metal, acrylic, solid surface, electrical, and glass expert finishing services.
Requirements for the Component Drawing and Millwork Drafting Project
Our client began the project by taking input from their own customers, enabling them to create and design concepts. Once the concept had been approved, the project was assigned to IndiaCADworks (ICW) for the design, modeling, and drafting of the display fixtures.
The client provided us with the concept model, images, and sketches that enabled our expert team to create assembly-level and part-level drawings, along with the complete production package. The formats required for these included PDF and CAD files for the drawings and DXA files for CNC production, which were to be part of our CNC programming services.
The client required a volume of 10-12 projects, or a summary of the hours worked each month. The duration of the project varied on its complexity.
Challenges Faced by ICW’s Engineering Team
Some of the challenges faced by our team were centered around understanding the construction methods of millwork for display, wood, glass, acrylic, and metal fixtures. Furthermore, there was a challenge in the understanding of the various methodologies in this type of work, and the utilization of different types of materials.
The challenge is further extended to the fact that only experienced people may be assigned to this task. Additional learning of 45 days had to be incorporated to understand the standards and production of this type of work. The project had tight deadlines and required experienced people to work over weekends to deliver on time.
Process Outline Followed by Our Millwork Specialists
We assigned a team of two to three people to work between 400-500 hours per month using Autodesk Inventor 2019 to render the final drawings and designs. They followed these detailed steps:
- Firstly, we offered a discounted trial rate to ensure that the client was satisfied with our abilities before proceeding.
- We then received the concept model, images, and sketches of the area and display fixtures to better understand the end product.
- We used the given information to focus on detail engineering to ensure that the outcome met all specifications.
- We made a concerted effort to adhere to the design intent, which ultimately met the client’s requirements.
- Subsequently, we created the component-level design and reconfigured the complete assembly method and suggestion.
- Finally, once approved by the client, we produced the DXA files for CNC and delivered the cut-list and bill of materials.
End Benefits for the American Client
The client did not wish to train people or hire further in-house employees, as this would result in wasteful expenditure. Instead, they benefited from the services of ICW, as we are aware of the materials that are utilized in the United States.
Ultimately, we benefited by securing a new client for future projects, and we were able to increase our capacity to provide for future clients that require services within the millwork industry. We were able to train our team to work with new materials and to utilize new methods, which will benefit future endeavors.
