At a bit of a crossroad as to what makes sense to automate next, and what would provide a better ROI. Always interested in anything safer, more accurate, and more efficient. The possibilities are of course endless, so I'll do my best to outline a bit of where we are currently.

Higher end residential cabinetry, but varies from contemporary to traditional daily. Could be a veneer paneled room one day, a high gloss slab kitchen with recessed channels, or a glazed and beaded inset kitchen the next day. Basically nothing repeatable that leans towards a production line type environment, but it's what we do and what we like. Currently outsourcing doors, face frames, drawer boxes, and panel lay ups.

Large equipment wise, we have a 5x12 flat table router with auto load/unload, edgebander with pre-mill, corner rounding, etc. (return conveyor on order), horizontal borer, 6 head moulder, rip saw, jump saw, 36" double wide belt, planer, jointer, slider, 2 paint booths, paint mixing booth, and other smaller items. Dust collection, air, and power are good.
+/- 25k sq/ft shop, 16 production employees, 5 management/design/admin, 2 install.

My initial gut instinct said we need to add CNC glue and dowel insertion and a case clamp, but I don't think our current confirmat assembly is slowing us down that much. Waiting on a cabinet box never seems to be an issue, but I can be convinced otherwise if I'm looking at this wrong.

A 4 axis vertical CNC capable of all edge and face milling/drilling could be an option for a lot of the custom miters, fasteners, hinges, Lamellos, etc.

I've considered a flat line finishing system, but a lot of what we do are irregular sizes and finishes. Typical examples would be an end panel mitered to a face frame, a 10' tall x 2' deep x 3" thick pilaster, or a project with 20 rooms and 20 different finishes. 75% would be my guess as to what could be processed flat. I could be wrong, but I don't think the flatline system changes our world here. Maybe a UV system that could be manually sprayed with an appropriate curing station?
Finishing seems to stand out as a bottleneck overall, but I'm not sure where to go there. A Kundig or comparable sander with veneer, white wood, and finish capability is a real consideration here as well.

Do we bring door and face frame production back in house with something like a Pillar MTH or something similar? That could help with the extended lead time issues we are seeing from our vendors, but extra space, tooling, and employees on our end.

So therein lies the predicament, what comes next?
I could be overlooking something else entirely, so welcome any input from those that have been down the path before me. What had the most impact on your production process?

What are your goals with a change? Have you done any time studies to verify choke points? Quizzed the employees on improvements?

What is the actual constraint to growth in the entire operation? Are you turning away customers? Are you able to hire all the workers you need? Can you keep track of work in progress?

If you have money to invest, I'd spend a minute to take a look at more than shop upgrades. It may be that you are underinvesting in other aspects of the business. What would happen if, for instance, you get hacked and all of your data is held for ransom? Could a small investment made now make you more scalable/capable/resilient as an organization?

Rich,
I'm not looking at this as change, but rather as continuing down a path of making us safer, more efficient, and more accurate. I feel stagnant if I'm not looking to improve constantly. Even if there are things we are doing well, there are countless options to do it better.

Paul,
Thanks for chiming in, I value your input. You have been at this a while and no doubt been down this road. You pose some good questions.

Yes, I am turning away work more than I'd like to, but that could change with fluctuations in the economy of course. I keep a pretty good pulse on the architects in my area, if they start slowing down, I get concerned. Maybe it's prudent to preserve cash and not invest in equipment upgrades, I'm not sure.

Attracting employees remains a hurdle. I like to think we pay above average wages for our market. Health insurance in place, retirement plan goes into effect 7/1. I'm looking at vision/dental/life insurance as well.

Tracking wise, we have been using Tradesoft for job tracking for a few years now with a pretty good results. Admittedly, it doesn't do us much good on the front end currently with unpredictable vendor lead times and costs.

I do have a third party IT firm that monitors and hopefully protects us in the event of a hack. I'm weak in this department, so do I fully understand the extent to which we're protected?, no. I should ask more questions here.

I hesitate to invest in marketing/advertising as I'm fearful we'd be overwhelmed in short order, but there is probably value in keeping the funnel topped up with new leads.

Thanks again for weighing in.

You need to look into Guffey systems. Finishing is your bottle neck then Guffey System will be the best ROI. I get nothing from them for this post we just love it and it has increased our finish department so much. I think if you are spraying odd stuff and changing colors it will be better than a flat line system for a fraction of the cost. Most people are not used to spraying hanging and our finishers have both been spraying for 15 plus years and picked it up no problem. The only issues we have had with the whole system were things that were completely our fault.