In the furniture industry, the vast number of customizable options creates challenges for inventory and manufacturing. You might use walnut, oak, cherry, pine, or other materials and offer different paint or stains. Sofas may be ordered with round, square, tapered, hairpin, or bun feet in wood or metal. And the fabric options!
Furniture manufacturing software helps you tame the staggering array of fabrics, materials, colors, shapes, sizes, and configurations offered to dealers, designers, retail partners, and/or end customers. Whether your company receives orders for a single piece of furniture at a time or for an entire office complex full of furniture, cubical walls, and floor coverings, you need a way to configure, price, and quote the order quickly and accurately.
Companies need furniture manufacturing software
Our robust Frontier furniture ERP solution with a built-in configurator is the ideal furniture manufacturing software for companies with customizable products. Our furniture manufacturing software easily manages and helps scale these types of businesses:
- To-order manufacturing. Furniture manufacturers that build to customer/dealer specifications, which vary on a project-by-project basis. “Building to stock” is rarely an option.
- The dealer channel. Except for the very largest jobs, contract furniture manufacturers rely on dealers for sales and installation. At the same time, they must support their dealers by providing value-added design services and design validation. Most important, they must be able to quickly provide quotes to their dealers, who themselves may be in a competitive situation.
- Design/layout tool integration. For complex “systems furniture” jobs, design/layout tools are mandatory.
- Mixed-mode manufacturing. While almost all finished goods are made strictly to order, there may be a substantial number of sub-assemblies and components that can and are manufactured to inventory for economic or scheduling reasons.
The related textile industry drives the styles, colors, and textures that will be available for home furnishings as well as contract furniture and floor coverings. In this industry, it is essential to have software tools that ensure the designer’s vision is translated to the material effectively—from fashion fabrics to upholstery to rugs and carpeting. That’s where Frontier’s furniture manufacturing software excels.
When a customer (dealer or designer included) can configure a product themselves, they are investing time in ensuring a positive outcome. By being able to show them what their configured product(s) will look like prior to ordering, you reduce errors and increase sales and customer loyalty.
Contract and custom furniture manufacturers are well-served by Frontier by Friedman configured ERP software. Frontier offers comprehensive to-order and mixed-mode manufacturing support, design/layout tool integration, and fully integrated dealer order entry. The powerful parametric configurator in Frontier is ideal for manufacturers who offer complete dimensional flexibility to the marketplace. Frontier’s furniture ERP software easily maintains thousands of fabric and color choices across your product lines, speeding the product data management process.
4 Key Benefits of Frontier’s Furniture ERP with Product Configurator
More than a simple rules engine, our parametric configurator empowers furniture manufacturers like yours to meet the growing demand for product customization. With this tool, your customers can easily specify their desired values or ranges for dimensions, finishes, materials, and more.
The results are significant for today’s furniture manufacturers:
- Enhanced Customer Experience: By offering customers the ability to personalize products according to their precise preferences, and preview the results before ordering, you can deliver an exceptional and tailored experience, driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Streamlined Configuration Process: Our software simplifies the configuration process by providing an intuitive user interface that guides customers through the parametric inputs. Real-time validation ensures that customers stay within predefined ranges, preventing errors and saving valuable time.
- Manufacturing Efficiency: The seamless integration of our parametric configurator within the Friedman Frontier ERP software enables accurate cost estimation, streamlined production planning, and optimized order fulfillment. By automating workflows and ensuring compatibility with your manufacturing capabilities, our solution helps you achieve operational excellence.
- Scalable and Adaptable: Friedman Frontier ERP’s parametric configurator is highly flexible and can adapt to your evolving business needs. It allows you to easily define and update parameter ranges as your product catalog expands or market trends shift, ensuring that you stay ahead of the competition.
Frontier’s furniture manufacturing software is more than its configurator. It’s a fully integrated furniture ERP that enables your business to connect orders to inventory to production to invoicing to reporting. With Frontier ERP for furniture manufacturing, you have a single point of truth for your company data that is always up-to-date. Web orders do not have to be re-entered or synced up. Everything is real-time so your business can operate more nimbly and more successfully.
Contact us for a demo today.
