Furniture and Fixtures|Dot Net IT Ltd

Furniture and Fixtures

Supporting Key Initiatives for the Furniture and Fixtures Industry

Furniture and Fixtures businesses worldwide increasingly are stressed with global pressure to find new efficiencies. Price sensitivity, volatile raw material cost, labor demands, and shorter product lifecycles continue to erode already thin margins. In response, many businesses are expanding their traditional business and looking for new opportunities—some in new and unknown markets and others centered in business performance. Lean initiatives are driving many businesses in distribution and manufacturing to reengineer business processes; from the warehouse to the plant floor to the top floor to the extended supply chain. These same companies are enjoying business-wide costs savings, reduction in cost of sales of finished goods as well as raw material and work in process, improved throughput, better utilization of existing resources, and improved customer satisfaction. Epicor understands the demands placed on businesses in the furniture and fixtures industry today.

Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures is a global enterprise resource planning software solution designed for organizations that manufacture or distribute furniture or fixtures. Epicor is uniquely positioned to manage the requirements of multi-faceted manufacturing and distribution businesses by supporting simple-to-complex distribution and manufacturing requirements, including full warehouse management, short run custom make-to-order manufacturing, high run make-to-stock and mixed mode manufacturing with a single, comprehensive solution.

Improve Operational Visibility

Taking stock of core business operations in an integrated fashion is, for many businesses, the initial step in improving bottom line revenues through greater visibility of front office, in the warehouse, and manufacturing plant floor operations. Through integrated ERP technology, your business removes redundant processes and improves accuracy of information to provide first class customer service and centralized operational management. Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures is a completely integrated solution for managing your business.

From Sales to Planning and Production to Procurement to Warehousing and Distribution to Customer Service and finally Finance—Epicor offers and end-to-end solution. Modular in its design, Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures offers flexibility in deployment as modules can be purchased and “turned on” during appropriate phases of implementation.

Putting Your Customer at the Center of Your Business

Many businesses find that close partnerships with channel business partners and end customers is critical to business success. Maintaining these highly developed relationships requires strong communication coupled with agility and flexibility to quickly respond to customers change in demand while offering comprehensive options in product design and function. Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures offers a suite of functionality designed to assist your organization in putting the demands of your customer first. Through embedded Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality, we ensure that all customer communication is fluid throughout the organization, providing complete workflow for each quote with customer signoff as a stage - closing the loop with customer service which logs each customer inquiry and provides comprehensive escalation workflow when needed.

Rapid and Accurate Product Configuration

Epicor understand that product velocity (new styles and designs) coupled with customer demand for more choices further stress already thin margins in the Furniture and Fixtures industry. As a result, Epicor offers a comprehensive rules-based configuration tool that steps customer service and yes, even end customers, through a guided workflow to self configure and get pricing for their order. Once an order is accepted, the configuration automatically transfers bill of material and routing requirements along with special instructions to the plant floor for production. Many manufacturers and light assembly distributors have used the power of Epicor’s unique Product Configurator to streamline order processing while improving accuracy.

Optimize Planning for Strong Cost Controls

Many businesses are getting back to basics and looking to reduce waste with stronger cost control and management of key cost elements. Through efficient management of the buying process, today’s businesses are using just in time techniques for procurement of both end products and raw materials. Additionally, buyers are looking for new ways to drive down margins with suppliers. Good forecasting and demand requirements provide better buying power.

Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures includes strong demand management and inventory control alongside material requirements planning and purchase suggestions capabilities to provide time phased material control to reduce raw and finished goods inventory being carried; enabling goods to be delivered just in time.

Critical to the manufacturing process are strong indicators of cost and post production cost analysis. Each production run is analyzed to determine total cost. Based on profitability and run analysis, production management can then determine if production planning estimates need adjustment for quoting and rerun the next time.
Improve Customer Service Through Delivery Performance

Long term business relationships are the bread and butter for this industry. Maintaining supplier status is based on measurements of not only cost and quality, but delivery performance is also critical. For many businesses, production and warehouse visibility, in particular the schedule of the plant has outgrown the traditional whiteboard. It now encompasses more expansive requirements such as “what-if” scenarios, multi-resource constraints, and in some cases as a result of workforce diversification, capability based scheduling (whether employee skill set or machine capability). With visual scheduling boards and multi-resource scheduling boards that offer color coded load, drag and drop load capabilities, and drill-down functionality, master schedulers as well as production managers can accurately manage change and respond to overload constraints proactively.

For manufacturers responding to the question, “When can you deliver?” during the sales cycle, Epicor offers true Capable-to-Promise capability that absorbs the requirements for the sales order into scheduling using appropriate finite capacity and MRP rules to offer an accurate delivery date. Simple acceptance of the sales order moves the requirement into production and procurement.

Using Lean Methodology and Demand Pull Systems to Improve Lead Times and Reduce Waste

Innovative manufacturers who deploy lean methodologies business-wide reap huge benefits in terms of customer satisfaction and overall business performance. For manufacturers looking to reduce wasted processes from the office to plant floor, integrated systems streamline business processes. Additionally, support for cell based strategies to support key customer requirements as well as on the plant floor, deploying demand pull systems that are based on replenishment principals further JIT material and component efficiencies. Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures contains embedded Kanban functionality (i.e. signal to manufacture or move product) that offers the functionality required to manage several types of electronic signals for Kanban control.

Promote Collaboration in the Supply Chain

More than ever, businesses are reaching down into their supply chains to eliminate waste and improve bottom line results. As global competition continue to drive cost down, supply chain partners are playing a larger role than ever before and proximity to suppliers can be a benefit. Many businesses are looking for ways to more seamlessly collaborate with suppliers for optimum results.

Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures promotes tighter collaboration throughout the supply chain; maximizing new efficiencies and measurements of supplier performance. Look to automated processes for requesting RFQ’s or for sending change orders through electronic queues on supplier portals or more directly through EDI.

Supporting Extended and Global Operations

With competitive pressures driving many businesses to expand globally where labor is considerably less expensive coupled with manufacturing plant consolidations and the desire to put distribution centers closer to end consumers, both large and small businesses find themselves suddenly managing multiple sites disparately.

Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures has comprehensive multi-site capabilities coupled with global presence to meet your company’s requirements for local support. Competing globally and domestically—bridging geographic and strategic diversity and eliminating supply chain inefficiencies—can be accomplished with the technologies to streamline intra- and inter-company processes and communicate quickly and accurately. Synchronization of complex relationships which determine supply, demand and fulfilment is the means to reaching new, industry-leading levels of business performance. Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures can help you achieve maximum efficiencies across your globally extended enterprise.

Robust Technology Framework

Epicor is uniquely positioned with a complete suite of applications based on 100% Web services technology, protecting your investment in software and services well into the future. Why are Web services so important to businesses, particularly in furniture and fixtures? Outside of all the reasons organizations look to Web services for deployment; speed, stability, reusability, and more; for midsize businesses, the incentive is eminent to drive electronic collaboration more firmly into their supply chain. Web services collaboration is fast becoming a necessity to doing business. Supporting your business strategies with applications built on service-oriented architecture (SOA) keeps the door open for businesses by meeting both the immediate requirement for scalability while supporting an open philosophy in the event your business strategy changes. SOA simplifies the coming together of established infrastructures to make acquisition and merger less painful—attractive to companies looking to acquire.

Industry Leading Service and Support

Epicor has over 20 years of experience delivering industry focused, world-class solutions, and on going customer care and service to over 20,000 customer installations. It is a true global solutions partner with support offices all over the world. The key vehicle that transforms Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures into a successful business solution is our Signature Implementation Methodology. Signature allows Epicor to provide consistent, customer-focused implementations that deliver added value because it provides a controlled environment. It is a highly structured, proven implementation methodology that successfully guides you and your company through a five step process, from an in-depth analysis of your business requirements all the way to the hand over, enabling your company to quickly begin using Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures in day-to-day operations saving you time and money by providing broad functionality at a lower total cost of ownership. Epicor has over 20 years of experience delivering industry focused, world-class solutions, and ongoing customer care and service to over 20,000 customer installations. It is a true global solutions partner with support offices all over the world. The key vehicle that transforms Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures into a successful business solution is our Signature Implementation Methodology. Signature allows Epicor to provide consistent, customer-focused implementations that deliver added value because it provides a controlled environment. It is a highly structured, proven implementation methodology that successfully guides you and your company through a five step process, from an in-depth analysis of your business requirements all the way to the hand over, enabling your company to quickly begin using Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures in day-to-day operations saving you time and money by providing broad functionality at a lower total cost of ownership.

Industry Leading Service and Support

Epicor has over 20 years of experience delivering industry focused, world-class solutions, and ongoing customer care and service to over 20,000 customer installations. It is a true global solutions partner with support offices all over the world. The key vehicle that transforms Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures into a successful business solution is our Signature Implementation Methodology. Signature allows Epicor to provide consistent, customer-focused implementations that deliver added value because it provides a controlled environment. It is a highly structured, proven implementation methodology that successfully guides you and your company through a five step process, from an in-depth analysis of your business requirements all the way to the hand over, enabling your company to quickly begin using Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures in day-to-day operations saving you time and money by providing broad functionality at a lower total cost of ownership.Epicor has over 20 years of experience delivering industry focused, world-class solutions, and ongoing customer care and service to over 20,000 customer installations. It is a true global solutions partner with support offices all over the world. The key vehicle that transforms Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures into a successful business solution is our Signature Implementation Methodology. Signature allows Epicor to provide consistent, customer-focused implementations that deliver added value because it provides a controlled environment. It is a highly structured, proven implementation methodology that successfully guides you and your company through a five step process, from an in-depth analysis of your business requirements all the way to the hand over, enabling your company to quickly begin using Epicor for Furniture and Fixtures in day-to-day operations saving you time and money by providing broad functionality at a lower total cost of ownership.