|
In office furniture manufacturing, especially office systems,
it’s not unlikely for the majority of a company’s business
to come from custom orders. At Inscape Solutions, about
two-thirds of its business is manufactured to-order. Before
Inscape pursued an enterprise system for its headquarters
and three plants, the company clearly understood the
complications posed by dimensional products on manufacturing
throughput.
Unfortunately, the selected ERP vendor had not addressed
in its solution some of the same critical issues as Inscape.
For example, a dimensional confi gurator was not part of
the product suite. Nor could the vendor deliver quality consultants
to implement their system. Eventually the price of
modifi cations infl ated to a point that compelled Inscape
to shelve the system and start from scratch.
In a new search, three vendors participated in a miniconference
room pilot, demonstrating their software’s
applicability to Inscape’s product manufacturing. Learning
from the past, Inscape prepared an issues list and asked
vendors to address these requirements as well as prepare
a quotation for modifi cations. Successful in its “Proof of
Concept,” Friedman Corporation was the selected vendor,
resulting in a major competitive replacement win for the
software company.
An Inscape personnel recalls, “As a configuration based
system, Friedman’s Frontier easily handles the dimensionality
of our offi ce systems’ cabinets, platforms and
partitions, not to mention the options such as color and
upholstery. Frontier allows us to gang similar orders using
the assembly scheduling module for efficiently running
our production line. Then we can split up these configured
orders so they are delivered to job sites as our customer
wants them, not losing visablity to the whole order.”
Inscape is anticipating rapid growth in its future. Knowing
that order throughput improves when a strong product
confi gurator is feeding your manufacturing system,
Inscape should be able to take on more new business
without hiring additional staff to handle it.
|
