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Sawmill Oak meets its 'Target'

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Sawmill Oak’s Serge Seguin, Yves Seguin and Luc Seguin.

Serge Seguin is a handy man. He had been working in construction for years. He was good with his hands and he knew what he was doing. But then he ran into a problem and it changed his life.


That life-changing event was actually a fairly minor problem. Seguin was renovating his own kitchen, when he discovered he couldn’t get the doors he needed. Sure, there were all kinds of doors in all kinds of colours at all the major retailers, but they were all standard sizes and that’s not what he was looking for. And rather than change his kitchen, Seguin decided to build his own kitchen doors.

That could have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t. Seguin figured he is probably not the only one with that problem and decided to see if he could sell his new doors.

“If all you need is a standard size doors, that’s easy to find,” he says. “But as soon as you need something a little different, you run into problems, just like I did. After I built my own doors, I decided to see if other people would want to buy them as well.” He started to manufacture kitchen doors in 1992 and never looked back.

Today, his company - Sawmill Oak - manufactures thousands of doors – in varying sizes - every week. They even supply some of the large retailers that didn’t have the product he was looking for when his whole venture started.

His brothers Yves and Luc have also since joined the company, they are all partners now and the family business is going strong.

“I am very lucky,” Seguin says. “To have my brothers work with me is great. I trust them completely and it’s family and you just know that even if you are away from the shop there is always someone there making sure everything runs as it should.”

Things were moving along splendidly, but there was this one nagging problem that just wouldn’t go away.

Before their MDF doors entered the membrane press they had to have the proper glue applied, manually.

It worked, but if it wasn’t perfect. If the glue application wasn’t perfect, or if a piece of dust or a hair got stuck on the glue, it would be clearly visible once the membrane had been applied, Seguin says.

They had always made it work, but it took a lot of time and effort to get it right and that in turn slowed them down.

Seguin was looking or a solution and saw the Cefla machine at a show. Using the Target to apply the adhesive solved all their problems.

“We looked around for quite a while and eventually decided to go with the Target,” Seguin says. “It’s been working perfectly ever since.” In fact, thanks to the machine, they’ve been able to increase production dramatically and save money at the same time because the machine uses less glue and there is less waste from ruined product. Sawmill Oak worked directly with Cefla’s Eric Mimeault, who helped them through the set-up and still occasionally takes prospective clients there to show them the machine in action.

“When they contacted us they had a pretty good idea of what they wanted and we worked together to get it all ready for them,” remembers Mimeault.

“The Target gives them a constant and even glue application, especially at the edges of the MDF doors, which is crucial, and it does so far more quickly and efficiently.”

Seguin says it was a breakthrough for them to automate that part of the operation. They’ve always relied on automation for repeatability and efficiency and once this machine took over the last manual station it completed their operation.

“It has worked really well for us,” Seguin says. “Now we are fully automated and it has made a big difference for us.”

Sawmill Oak has been in business since 1995 and between them the three brothers have more than 24 years experience in the industry. They take pride in their products and back everything with a 10-year warranty.

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