I am curious what is the average number of shop employees to office employees for other millwork shops? We are a 9 man architectural millwork shop. We build commercial and residential cabinets, as well as passage doors. We have a salesman/estimator, a drafter and a project manager in the office, as well as my wife a few hours a week for admin work. In the shop we have 3 full time and 2 part time employees. I am in the shop at least half the time acting as a foreman. So our office hours are about 40% of total hours right now in a given week.

What's the problem?

9 in shop, 2 in finish room, 3 1/2 in office. Almost nothing outsourced.

I am not saying it's wrong, it just seams office heavy sometimes. I want to make sure that I am not missing a big problem. I am also curious how other shops run.

Looks like you're 41% office and 59% shop if my calcs are correct.

We are:
28% office
46% shop
26% installation

I could use more brains in the office to bid, manage, and push work to the shop. Technology (i.e. software, CNC) makes the shop so efficient that the bottleneck is now in the office.

Cheers,
Luke

2006 - 3 in the office, 6 in the shop, all full time. 1.2m /year. Almost no outsourcing. No installation. No finishing.

2017 - 1.6 in the shop, .4 in the office. No outsourcing, no finishing, no installation.

Me in the office for drawings, quotes, shop supplies, client meetings and everything else. I outsource payroll, workman's comp and CPA work. We are wholesale so no tax work in the office. We have 5 full time in the shop and no installation as we build custom furniture.

5 office, 12 Shop, (29.4%), no install, all commercial work. The bottle neck is most often the office.
Payroll outsourced.

We do 99.9% in-house. Mostly moulding and wide plank flooring, some stair treads and (solid wood) counter tops etc. We finish maybe 10% of the moulding, and none of the flooring. Local delivery of flooring. Occasionally if we're really busy we'll buy moulder blanks instead of rough lumber for certain kinds of jobs, especially if width-sorted rough lumber is not available.

11 FTEs. Using "theoretical" numbers I come up with 39% non-production payroll including myself. I only work 4 days a week, so it would be over 40% if I worked 5-6 days like I used to.

Perhaps a more important number to consider is, of your production employees, how many paid hours are actually billable? We've done several studies over the years and come up with 55% every time. Note that this includes paid breaks (6.25% of an 8 hour day right there!), holiday, vacation, etc, as well as clean-up, maintenance, time between jobs/tasks, etc.