Material is the largest single line in a cabinetry quote. On a 42-carcass kitchen program we removed 18% of it without changing a single visible detail.
Start from the board, not the drawing
Panel sizes were being driven by round numbers on the elevation. Re-deriving them from a 2440 × 1220 board with a 4 mm kerf allowance immediately recovered two sheets in every ten.
Before and after, per kitchen
| Metric | Baseline | Optimised | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sheets consumed | 58 | 47.5 | −18.1% |
| Offcut area | 21.4 m² | 9.8 m² | −54% |
| Router hours | 17.2 | 15.6 | −9% |
| Edge banding | 412 m | 409 m | −0.7% |
- 1Rebuild the panel library parametrically against real board dimensions.
- 2Tag grain-critical panels explicitly.
- 3Nest the whole program at once, not per cabinet.
- 4Reserve offcuts above 300 mm as stock for the next job.
Nesting one kitchen at a time is the most expensive habit in a cabinet shop.
Frequently asked
Does whole-program nesting hurt scheduling?
Only if you cut everything at once. We nest globally and release by cabinet group, keeping the yield and the flow.
