Stylution's factory roars
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, July 9, 2006
Dongguan, China — When Jack Chen mastered his ABC's, he moved on to "D."
Building D, a 450,000-square-foot mattress and upholstery plant, stretches along the left side of the Stylution campus here in this Chinese manufacturing center. It churns out 2,000 pieces of bedding per day and 10 containers of sofas.
Its bedding capacity is 4,000 pieces of bedding per day, which adds up to more than 1 million pieces of bedding annually.
That makes the factory an Asian mattress lion. It is one of the biggest mattress factories in China — and the world — and it is the pride and joy of Chen, Stylution's chairman.
Ed Scott, president of Stylution's U.S. marketing arm, provides these figures to illustrate how big this factory is:
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The average U.S. mattress facility is less than 100,000 square feet. Stylution's mattress production space, on three floors of the four-story building, is more than triple that size.
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The average U.S. mattress factory has two or three quilting machines, four if it is a big plant. Stylution has 16.
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The average U.S. mattress factory has six to eight tape-edge machines. Stylution has 32.
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A good-sized U.S. mattress factory has up to 20 sewing machines. Stylution has more than 200, most of them imported from the United States.
Chen recently led a visiting Furniture/Today reporter and a delegation of U.S. bedding executives on a tour of the factory, starting with the coil-making machines, of which there are almost 40. Sixteen machines produce encased coils, one produces an offset unit, and 20 produce Bonnell coils, a workhorse of bedding producers around the world.
Once the innerspring units are assembled, they are tempered in an oven to give them additional strength, and then transported up to the next floor, where Asia's longest conveyor system, more than half a mile long, awaits.
That floor has an antistatic coating designed to keep dust and dirt at bay. All employees, and visitors, wear booties over their shoes to ensure cleanliness. "This is the cleanest mattress factory I've seen in my life, by a lot," said Scott.
Alex Chen, Jack Chen's son, who is heavily involved in the business, said, "We want to keep our plant very clean. We want our customers to have a clean mattress."
Three employees clean the plant around the clock.
Stylution runs all of its mattress panels and borders through a metal-detecting machine to make sure they don't contain a broken needle from one of the company's quilting machines. Then the panels and borders are ready for the mattress-construction process.
The conveyor belt is more than 3,300 feet long, making it the longest in Asia, according to Stylution executives. It moves mattresses from work-up stations, where the filling materials are stacked on the beds, to the tape-edge machines, where the mattresses are closed up. Then it moves them to the final inspection department.
After that, they are packaged for shipment. Mattresses bound for the United States have corner guards to protect them, and are sealed in heavy-duty bags.
The conveyor is actually a double conveyor belt, moving mattresses along on two levels. Chen said the conveyor improves efficiency and performance in the plant by instituting a standard operating system.
Why all this attention to detail?
"We produce medium-high and high-end bedding at this factory," Chen said. "I've spent the past 33 years addressing the high-end of the market. A quality mattress is very important for our customers. Sleep is very important for you — it gives you energy."
He said Stylution's vertically integrated operation, its careful attention to procedure, and its blend of automation and handcraftsmanship combine to produce strong bedding values for the U.S. market.
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