Ashwood cuts costs and ups quality

The two great things about this software implementation are first, its simplicity, and second, the related business benefits that have arisen from such a moderate investment. By spending £15-20,000 a year for the last five years, Ashwood Upholstery has seen a host of benefits. Inventory has dropped by a quarter from eight weeks worth to six; efficiency on the shop floor has improved due to better production planning; quality-related problems have been slashed from 200 per year to just 12; individual clients are ordering more frequently; and overall cashflow has improved. The company is South Wales based furniture maker Ashwood Upholstery and the software is an order management, production planning and stock control package called Suitemaker from UK author, Data Technology. It has been ‘tweaked’ over the last five years to suit Ashwood, which is acting as a ‘test bed’ for the product. The firm makes upholstery products, mostly sofas and chairs. Annual turnover is around £7million and there are 100 employees in all. The business is mostly make-to-order, but customers can choose from over 10,000 product variants, so it’s critical that sales know exactly what the client wants, and that this information is transferred quickly and accurately to the production plan and out to the shopfloor. Errors at the order intake stage would pass undetected through to the rest of the factory, including production where real damage could be inflicted. “Making the wrong product or variation of product for a customer isn’t generally good business practice, so something had to change,” comments Graham Howell, Ashwood managing director. The factory had been ordering raw materials eight weeks in advance and storing them in the warehouse until production needed them. The main production process then involved cutting, sewing and dyeing of fabric, then onto assembly. “A lot can go wrong in upholstery,” says Howell, “so we were holding eight weeks of safety stock to guarantee the customer’s order. And another issue: “Our original systems [apart from an Epsilon accounts package] were manual and paper-based. It was becoming impractical with mountains of paperwork everywhere and forms to complete.” Because the system depended on manual input it was prone to inaccuracies. It relied on the skills of the person receiving the order to ensure clients got what they wanted. “The problem was that any errors occurring at the order intake stage then filtered their way through to production so the client could end up rejecting the delivered goods. We had more than 200 instances a year of this.” Duplication of effort The system was crude but typical of many firms. Incoming orders (by phone, letter or fax) were checked then copied by hand onto the appropriate internal paper form. This task took four to five man days a week to complete. These forms were then split up into separate piles depending on the product model ordered. “We sometimes had to type in 250 sheets of paper orders per week into a PC before the orders went anywhere,” says Howell. “It all had to be coded up depending on the model and variant. Then a works order was printed out based on this information and sent down to production.” Things are different now, with the electronic order management, configuration and stock control system all running smoothly. Howell: “It’s been customised to suit our business. It has in-built knowledge and uses a range of selector lists. The person entering the order is taken through a series of on-screen questions designed to ensure complete integrity. Information can only be entered if it’s a valid combination that can be made, so it also minimises errors. “And once orders are entered, the software applies pricing rules and a description of what to make. A standard lead time is allocated and an acknowledgement sent to the client. This information then generates a ‘resource’ report and production plan for the shopfloor.” The software also enables Ashwood to plan for ‘miscellaneous’ production (for spares items like cushions or castors that don’t need to go through the main production lines), and produces cut sheets, load sheets and printed labels for all of its production items.