“Syscom has been busy over the last 8 – 12 months developing Microsoft Dynamics AX to dovetail into the furniture manufacturing industry with seamless results”, says Keith Pittaway, business consultant at Syscom PLC. “We’ve been working with major furniture manufacturers to install and implement their ERP systems and help to streamline operations so that they can cope with the Christmas rush”.
Syscom has been providing specialist business software using Microsoft Dynamics AX to the furniture manufacturing industry for more than two years. It has an excellent ability to understand complex manufacturing requirements and processes and put them to work in an easy to use way using Microsoft Dynamics AX Advanced Product Configurator. The Advanced Product Configurator allows furniture manufacturers to create product variants that each have a unique bill of materials (BOM), and route directly through to production.
"Those that make, often don’t trust those that sell to get things right”, says Keith. “The Product Configurator takes away any confusion as to what has been ordered and what has not. It automatically builds the bill of materials directly from a sales quotation or order and routes it straight through to manufacturing and production. Orders are planned by delivery load to maximise production capability whilst reducing storage space requirements. Components from suppliers are automatically scheduled to arrive at the right place at the right time reducing purchase commitments and delivery delay. This is a complete solution that integrates every part of your business to give you the direct impact on production costs and improvements to customer delivery lead times and customer satisfaction levels.”
Key functions of the Advanced Product Configurator are:
- A configured Q&A that enables retail outlets/other company divisions and web sites to send orders directly through to manufacturing automatically using an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) routine which handles configurations from a file to produce the correct Bill of Materials (BOM) and routing
- It handles thousands of fabrics and multiple options at once using highly complicated cost and price bands that are simplified and automatic including additive pricing
- Selling/manufacturing using different brands via multiple outlets including the internet using one central system
- Once complicated cross query reports are available as standard
“You only need to create a product when it is meaningful for you, and everything else is a configuration based upon it,” says Keith. “Configurations are generated based upon simple, easy to understand rules that you define. Everything from then on is automatically generated whether it’s for a one off or just a variation on a theme."
