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Wood Digest first visited Corona Millworks about three years ago. We reported in the November 2005 issue on Corona when the company first moved into its 45,000-sq.-ft. building. At that time, Corona made solid wood doors only and was just introducing RTF doors and drawer boxes. Corona was experiencing meteoric growth then. With the current economic conditions, Wood Digest revisited Corona to get an update.

Yes, there are silver linings in this down economy. One is located in Southern California.

Unlike many other companies in the woodworking industry, Corona Millworks is weathering its region’s housing slowdown by increasing sales through added product offering and increasing the quality of existing products. Corona’s sales are indeed increasing as the company has added drawer boxes and cabinet component parts to its offering of solid wood and RTF cabinet doors.

Southern California’s historic booming economy and five years of unprecedented residential building growth had fueled Corona’s earlier expansion. Simply put, many cabinet shops, large and small, could not keep up with demand and relied on outside suppliers like Corona Millworks for those component parts — like doors, drawer boxes and components — that they could not make in-house.

The present condition of the building market for Corona Millworks customers has decreased the overall market demand for cabinet doors and drawer boxes. However, today’s changing economy still requires outsourcing of doors and drawer boxes as well as cabinet component parts. The demand for doors and drawer boxes, albeit reduced, is still there. The key for Corona’s continuing growth is to gain existing market share for doors and drawer boxes and add cabinet components parts to its customers’ orders.

“To gain market share in wood doors, Corona Millworks addressed quality improvements and added value,” Corona’s president/CEO, Jose Corona, says. “Quality and added value are key to our gaining market share.”

Part of that quality control program involved adding new automated equipment, including two SCM Concept 1000 single-end CNC tenoners.

Says Corona: “These were added to ensure absolute squareness of solid wood doors as well shorten production time. Both tenoners are dedicated to outside edge details and both are equipped with tool changers on the machining spindles. The machining spindles are liquid-cooled CNC router spindles that machine with insert tooling from Leitz. Flex trim abrasives are on the sanding spindles. The outside edge details are perfectly machined by the tenoner.”

Added value was accomplished with the addition of DMC Masterbrush sanders, Corona says. The sanders white-wood sand all doors (on customer request) so that they are ready to accept finishes. The sanders were also equipped with Flex Trim abrasives so that the sanding scratch pattern on the outside edge details created by the tenoners will match the door faces and backs sanded by the Masterbrush.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Corona Millworks was founded in Santa Fe Springs in 1995 in a 1,000-sq.-ft. building. Originally founded as a general contractor, Jose Corona started building his own cabinets for his own projects. As he grew his contracting and cabinetmaking business, Corona grew ever more dissatisfied with lead times from cabinet door suppliers.

His first employee knew how to make doors and suggested that they do so. They bought some shapers and a sander and started making doors. They began soliciting neighboring cabinet shops for door orders and quickly decided that the door business was going to be a full-time business.

Shortly thereafter, Corona Millworks moved to a 12,000-sq.-ft. building in Chino where the company stayed until the end of 2004. In January of 2005 the company moved to its present 70,000 total sq. ft. of manufacturing space. This location allowed the doubling of sales with the same number of employees. This was accomplished with new machines, better plant layout and improved material flow and reduction to one shift.

Doors and drawer boxes are sold direct to custom kitchen cabinet manufacturers. Corona has its own direct selling sales force managed by sales manager, Brian Biegert. Brian oversees the team who calls on those shops that don’t make their own doors or drawer boxes as well as those shops that do but need specialty species or types of doors that Corona can produce.

Corona: “We manufacture solid wood cope and stick five-piece raised doors, mitred five-piece raised panel doors and MDF core rigid thermofoil doors (RTF). We originally purchased two SCM Routech Record 125N CNC routers and a Wemhöner membrane press for the RTF door division. RTF now accounts for 25 percent of our sales and continues to grow. In late 2006, we added a third Routech R125N CNC router to meet increasing demand for RTF doors.

“A fourth Routech CNC router is on order to add capacity for nested-based produced cabinet component parts. Daily production ranges from a low of 1,000 to high of 4,000 doors per day with a mix cope and stick, mitre and RTF styles.”

LEAD TIMES

Lead times for catalog items average five to seven days, Corona says.

“Short lead times are being maintained as a result of a better organized and more productive plant and experienced order desk personnel,” he explains. “Online ordering and MAS 90 system have eliminated the need for duplicating order entries, shortening lead times.”

In 2007 Corona began manufacturing drawer boxes. The drawer box product range includes prefinished solid wood dovetail, prefinished plywood dovetail and melamine doweled drawers. Notching for undermount drawer slides is an available option. Draw box business has grown beyond expectations necessitating a new separate building and more machinery. The new drawer box building is now fully operational and is its own division of Corona Millworks.

Dovetailing is machined on one of two Omec dovetailers. The dowel drilling and insertion is done on a Gannomat Index CNC drill and dowel insertion machine that is equipped with top drilling. All melamine drawers are edgebanded on an SCMI K1000 FRT edgebander.

Cabinet components are milled on one of the Routech R125N CNC machines. Corona utilizes Cabinet Vision for optimized downloaded cut lists and employs nested-based manufacturing. Nesting meets Corona’s

requirements for quick shipping of small batches of custom cabinet component parts.

The parts requiring dowel insertion are drilled and doweled on the Gannomat Index which is also linked to Cabinet Vision. Edgebanding is applied on the SCM K1000FRT edgebander. The cabinet component business is also a division of Corona Millworks and is operated in the same building as the RTF door production. Corona Millworks sells only unfinished doors.

Corona’s customers can buy doors, drawer boxes and cabinet components with the convenience of single sourcing. Each division — doors, drawers, components — has its own dedicated manufacturing spaces that are in close proximity to each other allowing for the convenience of same truck deliveries. This single-source convenience, coupled with Corona’s commitment to high-quality, fuels Corona’s growth in what many perceive as a temporarily declining market.