“Logistically, it does inventory management control,” said Bill Elliott of Northwood Designs, Inc. in Antwerp, NY, developer of Slabsmith. “It does the slabs, the remnants and it has the ability to do it all very quickly and easily with your physical inventory. One issue fabricators run into is keeping track of their slabs by a spreadsheet and then they have to give it to their accountant and they have to run around their yard to verify that their spreadsheet is right. They might be closer to accurate after a day or two of running around and double checking, but generally they are still off and they used up two work days that could have been used on other things.”
So how does Slabsmith help a fabrication shop? It allows a fabricator to create a digital slab that is accurate in color and size, and scan that slab to a specific location and have that digital slab in a database. The slab can also be scanned after it is fabricated and the remnant then can be saved to a location — conserving time later on so a fabricator doesn’t have to search through the yard to find a matching slab. “That’s one of the other really interesting things about Slabsmith,” said Elliott. “We create digital slabs in the beginning and the implication that they are accurate dimensions and show the real color of the slab. Now this gives you the ability to search by size, so you can say I need ‘X’ inches by ‘X’ inches and you can find it. That’s huge because you can quickly and effectively find your remnants in your yard and actually put them to use. The alternative is running around your yard, trying to find a matching color and using your tape measure to try to figure out the exact measurements.”