FDM - March 2009

Ralph’s Frame Works makes shorter runs and smaller quantities than they used to. Current production mix is 50 percent hospitality, 30 percent healthcare, and 20 percent residential.

Fifty
years of
frames

Celebrat-
ing its
50th year
in business,
Ralph’s Frame
Works is a case
study of persever-
ance in the furniture industry.
It is also a story of how three
generations of the Rice family
have leveraged their know-how
and hard work to build this
small business into a premier
supplier of plywood and ex-
posed hardwood frames.

The frame business began in the basement of Quality Chair, a producer of gooseneck rockers that was founded by the grandfather of current owner Tommy Rice. In the early 1960’s, Tommy’s father took over the company and began focusing entirely on furniture frames. He changed the name to better reflect this change and moved the operation across town to its current High Point, N.C., location. Over the next two decades, the business expanded to its current 60,000 square foot size and grew to 80 employees. Tommy has managed the business since graduating from college in the 1980’s and looks forward to welcoming his two sons, currently part-time summer employees, into the business after they complete college.

of advertisement,” Rice says. “These days, we don’t often get a complete design spec for new products. Customers no longer rely on us just to cut the frame. They want us to engineer it, make approval samples, and ensure that the end result is a quality frame that lasts.

“We put our knowledge of top quality frames into the design, materials, and construction of every piece”, adds Rice. “We also realized that we had to stay current with technology in order to produce quality frames on time and at competitive prices.”

Smaller order sizes

Three Shoda routers demonstrate the company’s commitment to advanced technology. “My dad taught me the importance of buying quality equipment to the business. In his day, it was ripsaws; now it’s software to make the machines more efficient and productive.”

As Ralph’s customers
embraced just-in-time
assembly to minimize
inventories, the order
size has decreased dra-
matically. “The routers
enable us to produce
small order quantities
more efficiently,” Rice says. “We recently bought our third
machine because we know that we simply cannot compete
as a manual operation. We actually receive more business
because of the capabilities these machines give us. They
attract more business to us because they allow us to better
serve our customers.

Rice says the benefits Ralph’s achieved with the routers opened their eyes to other technology investments that save time and reduce manual setups. Looking to improve on the standard router software, which required considerable time to program, Rice invested in Plataine’s Nesterwood software last year.