In our last newsletter, we asked: How long do you take between Template and Install?
We received more than a hundred responses, so the results are definitely interesting … but our process was loose enough that the results aren’t technically statistically sound. Instead, I’ll characterize them here and share some nuance from the answers.
- Approximately 75% of people responded in the range of 5-10 working days (some said 7-10 days, some said 5-7 days, some said 5-10 days, some said 1-2 weeks etc.)
- Approximately 20% of people responded in the range of 10-15 days
- Approximately 5% of people responded with something else
Nobody said more than 4 weeks (and that wasn’t all the time) and nobody said less than 3 days (although I have spoken to one fabricator doing 1-day and even same day turnarounds for a premium!)
The industry appears to be fairly consistent in this timing – what’s more interesting to me are the detailed comments. Several reported lead times needing to be lengthened recently. Some reported variations based on material or retail vs wholesale. Some said they quote a certain number of days but then try to deliver sooner. Here are some representative comments … we hope you find them interesting, and thanks to everyone who shared!
6 business days. If we template on Monday, we will install the following Tuesday…guaranteed!
Tell them two weeks but usually get it done in one week.
1 week turnaround for builders, 1 1/2-2 weeks for remodels and most average sized commercial, 3-4 weeks if extremely large and/or complicated commercial projects (normally not installed all at one time, so this is for completion NOT first install).
We tell customers that it is two weeks from the date that the order is released. If we get out to a jobsite and we are missing information like a sink or an edge profile, we do not release the order to production until it is received. We have a separate activity called “Order Verified” which is auto-scheduled to be one day after the template. If everything at the template is finalized, it is marked complete and the order moves forward. If everything is not, the template can be marked complete but there is an additional step preventing production from auto-scheduling out. If it takes one day, three days, or a week to get the missing information we can adjust the order verified activity accordingly without changing the date the template was complete. Then their two week schedule starts from there.
5 business days for builder work, 10-15 business days for retail
2 week for builders and 2-4 weeks for retail. Times have had to be lengthened for retail.
5-7 working days for polished edge jobs. 7-10 working days for mitred jobs.
10-14 days during busier months and 7-10 during slower months
It varies. Since we track our production by our fabrication units, we can tell our customer exactly when the template & install are going to be.
I typically say, “Once we get a 50% deposit, it is typically about 2 weeks, depending on schedule.”
We work with several different retail outlets. One we tell our customers 10 to 14 business days another the turn around is 10 days … for our direct customers we do a 7 day turnaround.
5 working days 95% of the time. Very involved jobs are longer (7 days) occasionally because it suits our working areas, so we may move a job forward or back 1 day. This has been the same for the last 10 years or so. I think with the variables in play working with stone it’s hard to make the lead time any shorter whilst maintaining a good standard.
Our target is 10 working days from template to install. Sometimes we finish early and this is subject to material type and project complexity to name a few reasons. For example, we have increased the fabrication timeline by one week for quartzite. Our scheduling accuracy has been quite good and we attribute a large part to Moraware as a tool.
