Precision, people, and the perfect fit

In Multiflex’s factory, where every millimetre matters, a family-led team blends engineering discipline, creative interpretation, and hard-earned experience to build furniture that always fits – on paper, on machine, and on site.

The Multiflex team (L) carries out complete furniture solutions across residential, hospitality, commercial and retail sectors (R) in the USA, Australia and the Middle East.

By ROY THOMAS

The first thing you notice upon entering Multiflex’s 3,200-square-metre Rabale facility in Navi Mumbai is not just the scale but the cleanliness and the functionality of the place. It seems to exude the quiet calm of a place that knows what it is doing and is confident about its ability to deliver.

Multiflex began in 1989 when the Quadros group of companies was formed. With extraordinary prescience, anticipating the huge market opportunity for organised manufacturing, the company swiftly graduated into panel processing activities in 1995.

At the centre of this steady, purposeful energy stand Ashok Quadros and Anand Quadros, the founders of Multiflex, whose gravitas and measured presence capture the culture more clearly than any handbook ever could.

Ashok and Anand have spent over three decades building an organisation shaped not by slick marketing, but by method, discipline and a relentless refusal to compromise on what they believe woodworking should be: a profession of honour.

To them, the shopfloor is a living organism, and the team that runs it is its nervous system, each one empowered to think, improve and question.

Long before modular furniture became an industry expectation, the brothers were building their own understanding of precision. The ecosystem in those years was unpredictable: machines behaved differently every day, boards varied from batch to batch, and repeatable accuracy was almost mythical.

Yet they persisted, slowly shaping the company, encouraged by the support and guidance of their good friend and mentor, the late V. Ramakrishnan, fondly remembered as “Ramu Sir”.

Engineering first

The ethos of the organisation today revolves around one unwavering belief that the product on site must match the drawing without negotiation. “Anything less is failure,” they say with strong conviction. This line has travelled across the factory floor for years and absorbed until it became part of the organisation’s DNA.

“You have to respect material,” Ashok says. “If you respect material, you’ll respect the process, and if you respect the process, the result will always take care of itself.”

One of the defining aspects of Multiflex’s identity is that it treats engineering not as a support function but as the foundation of the business. Every project – be it a luxury hotel room, or a high-end residential project – begins with the engineering room.

Here, drawings are not simply translated, they are interrogated, clarified, and sometimes fully re-thought. Anand explains that the aim is always to predict errors before they occur. It is here that the shift from traditional carpentry to structured, document-dependent manufacturing truly becomes visible.

“Clients today expect certainty,” he says. “Certainty in delivery, certainty in fit, and certainty in finish. That certainty is engineered long before the first cut is made.”

As the process unfolds, the engineering team prepares detailed production drawings, bill-of-materials, and nesting plans, ensuring that every joint and every tolerance is accounted for. Error margins are treated with near-scientific scrutiny.

This emphasis on engineering accuracy provides not only consistency but also allows the company to take on complex projects across sectors where timelines are tight and aesthetic expectations are non-negotiable.

Experience speaks

Anand Quadros is the invisible hand behind all projects, sits at the nerve centre of the operation. He manages and tracks the pipeline of projects, monitors procurement and approvals, and ensures that changes are properly documented before they disrupt the workflow.

He translates architectural language into production language and solves conflicts between site demands and factory constraints. “Miscommunication is the most expensive material in this factory,” he remarks.

His role becomes especially vital when Multiflex works across sectors like hospitality and commercial spaces, where site conditions evolve constantly. “If architecture adds a curve,” he says, “engineering must find a way to keep it manufacturable, and production must deliver without losing stability. That chain of understanding is what keeps us consistent.”

Reuben Lobo, also a member of the family and the brain behind Multiflex’s manufacturing prowess, oversees production flow, manpower allocation, daily targets, and the critical balance of speed versus precision.

He is the person who ensures that the engineering vision survives its journey through execution. His responsibilities include overseeing every machine centre, tracking production efficiency, and ensuring that workers are trained not only to operate equipment but to understand why certain processes must never be skipped. “At the end of the day, the factory only performs as well as the discipline we maintain,” he says.

Material responsibility

Multiflex’s raw material handling is one of its quiet strengths. The philosophy is simple: bad input inevitably produces bad output, no matter how good the machines are. The company adheres to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and various furniture standards.

Within the organisation, standards are seen not as targets but baselines. Many projects – especially in hospitality and healthcare – demand tolerances beyond published norms. Some require custom testing frameworks. Others rely on documentation and traceability that exceed standard compliance.

“We stick to standards,” Joseph Noronha, Quality Control and Finishing Supervisor says, “but we don’t stop at them.” This ability to outperform norms has made Multiflex a dependable partner for demanding sectors, be the precision needs of hospitals, the finish expectations of hotels, or the detailing depth of luxury homes.

Measurements of materials are taken seriously. Even slight deviations in sheet thickness are accounted for during engineering. This obsession with dimensional integrity is part of the company’s DNA and is one of the reasons clients across sectors return to them.

“Sadly, Indian suppliers have a long way to go in terms of quality,” says Joseph. “We send our team to our supplier’s factory to check each piece.” Where required, the company imports material from overseas to ensure quality and precision in its work.

His responsibilities include dry-fit checks, edge alignment testing, laminate finishing consistency, and ensuring that each unit passes through a systematic checklist before dispatch. Under his watch, every edge, every hinge alignment, every shutter gap becomes a matter of personal accountability.

Machine lineup

The shopfloor layout has been engineered for flow. Work moves in a straight line – from panel sizing to edge banding, routing, drilling, pressing, assembly, and finishing – using a carefully sequenced set of machines that eliminate unnecessary handling and reduce dependence on operator judgment.

Advanced CNC systems drive the core of the workflow, supported by high-capacity beam saws for accurate sizing, automated edge-banding units that deliver invisible zero-edge finishes, and multi-boring and routing centres that ensure every hole, groove, and recess aligns perfectly with the engineered drawings.

These are complemented by dedicated multi-forming equipment, calibrated sanding lines, hydraulic presses, and controlled finishing booths equipped to handle lacquer, laminate, and paint-grade work with consistency.

To support this process-driven environment, Multiflex has built its production around flat-pack engineering, where each panel is pre-drilled, marked, and calibrated for fast and clean installation on site. Uniformity across batches is reinforced through robotic lacquering, a system that eliminates manual variation and delivers a smooth, repeatable finish every time.

This machinery ecosystem is matched by an equally disciplined material approach. Multiflex sources boards, adhesives, and hardware from reputed international suppliers, relying on components that are tested for durability and, in the case of hardware, often backed by lifetime warranties.

All materials comply with E0.5 or E1 lower formaldehyde-emission standards, and the finishing line uses food-grade lacquers and FSC-certified input materials where applicable. Ashok often reminds his team, “A machine doesn’t lie. If something is wrong, the mistake is in the drawing, or the material, or the handling.”

Business verticals

Multiflex’s strength lies in its ability to navigate vastly different types of clients and sectors. Hospitality, for instance, demands finesse: curved panels, veneer matching, concealed lighting, and precision joinery that must remain stable under heavy usage.

Healthcare demands durability and hygiene – clinics, OPDs, diagnostic rooms, pharmacy counters – where units must withstand constant wear. Luxury apartments, requires speed and standardisation. These are high-value, tight-deadline environments where quality cannot slip under the pressure of volume.

Multiflex handles all three sectors with a system that adapts through engineering and planning rather than through compromise. This is one of the reasons the company’s client base includes a mix of well-known hospitality, healthcare, and luxury real estate brands.

Who’s who

At the heart of Multiflex’s operational clarity is Neha Jhunjhunwala Eidnani, Managing Partner, who emphasises, “A factory must run on information, not assumptions.”

She tracks cost structures, monitors margins, and connects engineering decisions to business consequences. Neha believes a manufacturing company cannot function as a chain of isolated departments; it must behave like a single organism. Under her supervision, the company’s workflows benefit from a systematic approach that blends engineering clarity with predictable costing.

Multiflex’s list of customers is like a ‘who’s who’ of the Indian industry including Oberoi Realty, Mariott, Ritz Carlton, Park Hotels, Warburg Pincus, Nomura, Ambhuja Cements, J.P. Morgan and Tribhuvan Bhimji Zaveri. Other big names include Ratan Tata, Gauri Kirloskar, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and R.P. Goenka.

Marketing is more by word of mouth. Business comes looking for them – such is the reputation of quality, meticulousness and sticking to delivery schedules. Multiflex can lay down the terms of business that the company will engage in!

Today, Multiflex carries out complete furniture solutions across residential, hospitality, commercial and retail sectors, in the USA, Australia and the Middle East.

Dry fit

As the work moves to assembly, the approach shifts from machine precision to human judgment. This is where the cumulative decisions taken at every earlier stage become visible: whether a hinge sits cleanly, whether the laminate line is uninterrupted, whether shutters meet perfectly. The QC team ensures everything aligns before the unit advances to finishing.

The factory treats finishing as a final layer of respect to the product, rather than as a touch-up station. Units move through inspection lights, cloth checks, and corner alignment reviews.

Multiflex has bridged the distinction between modular, semi-modular and hybrid systems. Modular requires absolute precision. Semi-modular requires flexibility. Hybrid systems must provide the benefits of both. “If you build 10 units,” Ashok says, “and all 10 behave exactly the same way, only then you can claim to be a truly modular company.”

Next generation

One of the strongest aspects of Multiflex’s culture is its insistence on grooming young talent. Interns come through the engineering department, the assembly lines, and the factory floor. They are taught to read drawings, understand tolerances, study hinges, screws, slides, adhesives, and learn why no part of the factory is truly “low skill”.

Aditya and Glenn Quadros, Anand & Ashok’s sons, who currently work as senior manufacturing and costing and commercial engineers, have been through the grind, dirtying their hands while learning first-hand about each machine from the operators. This internal training system ensures that experience is not lost, and that the organisation retains continuity.

Ashok sums it up aptly: “A factory is not built in the year you start it. It is built every day, through every decision.” His legacy is not simply a woodworking company. It is a palpable statement for why manufacturing excellence still matters, and why craft, when paired with engineering clarity, can deliver consistency that even the most demanding client’s respect.

 

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