North Atlantic Corp.
Overall Excellence, more than 500 employees | 2019 PBN Manufacturing Awards
Doors have been around forever.
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Even Fred Flintstone had a door on his home in “The Flintstones” cartoon. (Glass windows still hadn’t made it to the town of Bedrock, however.)
But in these days of keyless door locks and design advances, things have changed. Custom door, window and staircase manufacturer North Atlantic Corp. has turned to technology, robotics and acquisitions to shore up its company for the decades ahead.
Starting out 39 years ago with 12 employees in Somerset, NAC is now 750 employees strong, with four locations in New England and Tennessee.
The company is owned by Peter Humphrey and his sons Michael and John – CEO, chief digital officer and chief operating officer, respectively. The brothers have been coming to NAC with their dad since they were little. Now active decision-makers, the brothers interact with some of the same employees they did then.
The company has fully embraced growth via acquisitions and innovative productivity improvements. Major annual investments, along with its lean focus, keep the company competitive, with steady revenue increases.
NAC has made 15 business acquisitions so far.
‘We need to figure out how to help people love their homes even more and make building easier.’
JOHN HUMPHREY, North Atlantic Corp. chief operating officer
Last year, it bought Central Woodwork and CenWood Appliance in Tennessee, its first acquisition outside of New England. Like NAC, the Tennessee company had been run by a family for several generations.
At the same time, $500,000 worth of equipment was installed in NAC’s New England locations in 2018.
NAC launched its e-commerce website, Cleary365.com, for its residential wholesale building division, Cleary Millwork, of Somerset. The site is custom-designed for lumberyards selling doors, stairs and moldings, and it now handles about one-quarter of the company’s orders.
“We designed the whole platform ourselves,” said John Humphrey. “It’s a very intuitive site.” It allows price quoting, product ordering and delivery scheduling.
“Once it’s generated a quote, it can convert that to an order and integrate it with the production schedule,” he said. A pricing toggle allows a dealer to collaborate with customers without displaying the dealer’s cost. The administrative dashboard also allows for the setting of price tiers.
“As an administrator, I can set a best-contractor price, a price tier for a homeowner, or for a specific job. That way, everyone in my company would be set for that price,” keeping quotes more consistent, Humphrey said.
Cleary365.com generated $1 million in sales in its first 24 weeks, according to NAC, handling about one-quarter of all weekly quotes, freeing staff to convert orders into sales and value-added activities.
“It’s still in its nascency,” Humphrey said. “We’ll build out functionality as we continue.”
The company plans to introduce the system to its New England residential retail and Tennessee wholesale markets this year.
Humphrey welcomes an opportunity to talk about the more than $1 million robotic and artificial-intelligence warehousing system being installed as part of a 40,000-square-foot extension to the Somerset location this year.
The door-picking system will allow NAC to maintain 100 percent accuracy on doors needed for production.
“Within this cage, there is enough space for about 30,000 door slabs, stacked from the ground up, each one a different SKU, stacked 80 high or so based on the inventory we are using,” Humphrey said. “It will intelligently rearrange stacks to make picking time more efficient.” Humans don’t have to lift the doors.
An operator is needed, however, to build pallets from that day’s production. But the machine picks the doors – in 27 seconds, said Humphrey – as opposed to a human’s average of one minute, 30 seconds. Robots and automatic conveyors will also be added to the pre-finishing production area.
With its robotics and family focus, NAC is like “The Jetsons,” looking ahead to find ways the company and its customers can benefit from technology.
“We need to figure out how to help people love their homes even more,” said Humphrey, “and make building easier.”
