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Norcraft Companies
Advances Production Efficiency and Order Accuracy With Friedman’s
Software Configuration Abilities and Dealer Integration
As cabinet manufacturers undergo a metamorphosis to address the
paradigm shift from manufacturing stock or semi-custom cabinets
to the specialized demands of custom kitchen design, one perceptive
cabinet company began putting the technology in place back
in the mid 1990s to contend with shifting market trends. Since its inception as MidContinent Millwork almost 30 years ago,
Norcraft Companies has evolved into the sixth largest cabinet manufacturer
in the United States. Its product offering is uniquely positioned
in the marketplace, including brands representing both framed and
frameless cabinetry, with stock and semi-custom price points. The
company’s brands include Norcraft® Cabinetry, MidContinent® Cabinetry,
UltraCraft®, StarMark® Cabinetry and Fieldstone® Cabinetry.
Today, Norcraft Companies has over 700,000 square feet of manufacturing
and assembly operations in five geographically disbursed plants
and five distribution and regional service centers.
Rolling out an efficient technology solution In 1995 Norcraft was overdue for a change in computer platform
and software applications. Bob Kerr, Director of IS for Norcraft
Companies, explains, “Our company was running an old NCR
type of system with disjointed databases and remote servers. The
priority was to move to a more unified machine platform to enable
centralized data repositories for more accuracy and better sharing
of information.”
The technology buzz for cabinet manufacturing in the mid 1990s
focused on the introduction of software to address product configuration.
Norcraft had selected the AS/400 as its technology platform. For
software, it found a good fit with Friedman Corporation. Friedman
was early to market, and continues to lead the industry, with a
configuration-based enterprise software solution.
Norcraft first implemented the Friedman software at two manufacturing
plants, one in Cottonwood, MN, and another in Newton, KS, then
at the company’s headquarters in Minneapolis. Over time the
company gained measurable improvements in production efficiency.
“ Implementing configuration-based software took our whole
manufacturing operation up several notches, particularly in the
areas of parts
requirements, purchasing, and forecasting. Norcross netted a $5
million inventory reduction from improved production planning and
a better understanding of what to buy.”
In fall of 1999 Norcraft started converting the five remote distribution
centers from legacy NCR systems to AS/400s and Friedman Frontier® software.
Even with a modest IS staff of seven people including Kerr, the
distribution centers were up and running by the middle of 2000.
“ Once the distribution centers went live with the software
we noticed huge improvements in customer service and order accuracy.
Previously,
order entry had no visibility to where the cabinets were going
beyond the distribution center. Once the Frontier order entry system
became part of the equation, cabinets could be tagged for the customer.
It improved the scheduling process because we scheduled the right
delivery scenarios for the right customer, rather than sending
cabinets to the distribution center and relying on orders to be
sorted there. Frontier provides solid inventory tracking from the
point the order leaves the manufacturing facility, all the way
through the in-transit process, to when it is received into the
distribution center, and then when it ships to the customer.”
Extending the solution to Norcross divisions A Frontier conversion currently in process involves Norcraft’s
UltraCraft division, a semi-custom frameless cabinet line it acquired
in June 2000. UltraCraft’s transition to Frontier is slated
for fall 2003 completion. Because of its unique product design,
Kerr notes some advantages and disadvantages to bringing UltraCraft
on the system.
“UltraCraft manufactures a frameless cabinet,
so they can’t use any of our existing model analogies for
framed brands. However this is also an advantage, because they
can exploit all the latest features of the Frontier configurator
and the rest of the system without getting hung up on any of the
old nuances Norcraft has adopted over the years.
“ The biggest advantage for UltraCraft will come from addressing
order entry and customer information. Our current methods for order
entry are not restrictive enough with options and consistencies.
Frontier helps overcome accuracy issues because it is a rules bases
system that automatically steers order entry.”
Other issues UltraCraft is confronting are from the inventory and
manufacturing standpoint, including lead times and production scheduling
through the plant. Kerr says, “Production planning will smooth
out with Frontier, the schedule won’t get overloaded and
cause orders to be jockeyed around. Purchasing and inventory accuracy
will also improve because our orders will be gauged by actual inventory
requirements versus guesstimation.”
Implementing the Frontier solution at the StarMark divisions will
be more straightforward because of its similarities to Norcraft
and its framed cabinet configurations. StarMark will utilize many
of the Norcraft models and matrices, even with the construction
differences for designations such as doors styles and finishes.
Blazing a trail with dealer software integration If a competitive advantage was ever to be gained through the use
of software, Norcraft has found its winning edge by extending its
efficiency straight to the kitchen dealer. A recent development
from Friedman encompasses the integration of the Frontier configuration
and customer service application with 20-20 Technologies’ 20-20
Design software for dealers. As a result, Norcraft will achieve
the highest level of integration with its dealers using the industry-leading
20-20 product. It ensures every order sent from a dealer to Norcraft
is totally validated and accurately priced using Norcraft’s
latest specifications.
Kerr explains, “The entire cabinet industry has gone one
step beyond simply filling cabinet orders. The industry has shifted
to handling orders for complete kitchen designs, with the end user
influencing their design rather than cabinet manufacturer dictating
what is available to them. The cabinet dealers have responded by
using 20-20 to help visualize their kitchen designs and specify
cabinetry orders. Now 20-20 is being integrated with the Frontier
system for a complete design, ordering and production control system.”
Jim Naas, Strategic Product Director for Friedman Corporation,
says, “The Frontier and 20-20 Design integration is a technology
breakthrough that will eliminate errors in cabinet specification
and pricing. Both the cabinet dealer as well as the manufacturer
will benefit directly in the form of reduced time and cost, from
order placement to product delivery. The integrated system will
insure that both price and product engineering changes are immediately
in place at the 20-20 equipped cabinet dealer, completely validating
the kitchen design as well as providing accurate dealer costs.”
Once the 20-20 software validates and prices the order using Norcraft’s
current product specifications, the system will then send an electronic
order to a secure server, transferring the cabinet details from
the design directly into the Frontier order management application.
From there, these customer specifications will be validated, planned,
scheduled and built just like any other order through Frontier.
In addition to cost and lead time improvements, dealers are gaining
a turnkey solution that doesn’t require the support of an
IT staff. 20-20 is a recognized standard in the cabinet design
industry. Norcraft dealers will receive a CD to install with 20-20
that integrates the product and pricing structures down to the
customer level. Electronic updates eliminates the need to send
price books to dealers.
Norcraft product rollouts respond to trends, adds profitability In a design trend marketplace Norcraft is uniquely positioned to
efficiently bring new major product announcements to market. The
company feels this is a
tremendous statement to both the ease of use of the configuration software and
the efficiency of its manufacturing operations. As a result, Norcraft can roll
out two major and two minor new product announcements a year, bringing new products
to market within four months. Though Norcross got away from new product introductions
during the Y2K conversion timeframe, last year new product sales contributed
$6 million in revenues.
“ We are able to stay on top of design trends and offer enhancements typically
found in custom cabinets but at semi-custom and stock prices, and we can install
these features without slowing down the assembly process due to the bill of material
functions of the Frontier system. This is attractive to dealers who are generally
used to manufacturers sending out enhancements as piece parts in separate boxes
to be installed with the cabinets on site.”
Norcraft also bolsters its profitability with order accuracy driven
by the configurator and enhanced rules processing in order entry.
Norcraft leads the industry with
the lowest replacement rate of .6% of sales in the category of stock to semi-custom
cabinetry. In fact, as a customer-driven company, Norcraft’s policy is
not to charge for replacements for order errors. Three years ago, at its worst,
the rate was 2%, but Frontier reason codes and error tracking identifies the
problems and enables manufacturing processes to improve as a result.
Kerr concludes, “Frontier is the most prominent configuration
based system on the market. We are fully entrenched in the software
and continue to capitalize
on new functionality to improve our business. As Friedman continues to introduce
new capabilities to the system we foresee it supporting us through future
metamorphoses in both our company and the cabinetry industry.” |
