The Furniture industry is dealing with a shift in US consumers buying preferences. Gone are the days of custom pieces and month-long turnaround times, new trends show a need for smaller, more affordable furniture options that are easy to assemble and available to ship quickly. Successfully managing your inventory is essential to managing stock levels, reducing costs and keeping customers happy.
In today’s environment, manual processes only slow down operations for housewares and furniture wholesale suppliers. Automating processes is necessary for both furniture manufacturers and distributors. Manufacturers need visibility into their entire supply chain to improve the efficiency of your operations, understand material availability, and gauge customer demand.
Furniture distributors need complete visibility to keep costs low while delivering the products on-time and correctly. Real-time, accurate inventory data is needed to effectively manage stock levels, know what products are available now and where product is located, and to correctly assess and forecast demand. Your workers must be able to find inventory quickly and have it ready to ship to the correct customer.
No longer hindered by geographical regions or brick and mortar stores, the furniture industry must ramp up their product portfolio to handle consumer preferences (fashion, regional, seasonal etc.) and be ready to ship quickly. This increase in inventory also increases the chances of errors. By automating manual processes in the warehouse with a NetSuite WMS mobile solution or automating the manufacturing shop floor with a NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing solution, you gain visibility to real-time, accurate information which is key to making business critical decisions.
Mobile technology not only saves you time and provides visibility, by eliminating error-prone manual data entry, you can guarantee you are picking and shipping orders correctly.
You should be automating:
Data entry is one of the biggest areas for errors in the supple chain. By removing that risk and eliminating extra steps between tasks, your users can complete tasks in a fraction of the time it takes to complete manual, paper-driven processes.
Barcoding offers support for lot and SKU traceability, as well as the ability to efficiently identify and create labeling for traceability for everything from raw materials to finished goods. If you are working with big box retailers or eCommerce giants like Amazon and Wayfair, you want to avoid fines for stockouts, mispicks or shipping delays. With the ever-increasing pressure to meet vendor compliance requirements, barcoding and automation are a must-have.
To effectively manage your processes, you may have needs for more advanced mobile tools to further automate and speed up your operations:
“Employees are saving time and effort, and every minute we can save on a task adds up over multiple employees, which multiplies over the course of the week, month and year.”
Furtex Limited is a manufacturer and wholesaler of high-end soft furnishings that takes pride in its growing business. Furtex moved to NetSuite to leverage a cloud-based ERP, but lack of visibility of their inventory challenged them to search for a mobile solution.
GOAL
Needed a solution that could manage their growth and complex requirements. Their distribution was struggling in terms of storage, and poor visibility into their stock slowed their operations down. These factors impacted sales, operations and customer service. Furtex chose NetSuite and RF-SMART for the flexibility, robust functionality and ability to scale with them as they grow.
APPROACH
Implemented RF-SMART with NetSuite to ensure their inventory is correct and manageable. One of their biggest challenges was moving an entire bin to another physical location, which required scanning every item. RF-SMART’s Bin Transfer functions let’s employees complete jobs with one scan.
Eliminated paper-based processes with handheld devices that direct workers to the correct location every time. Targeted weekly and monthly Cycle Counts now take the place of annual physical counts to focus on big-ticket items.
Because kits don’t carry stock in NetSuite, Furtex was experiencing picking inefficiencies with items for their kits. RF-SMART prompts users to only pick items for kits when we have all the parts available, so that it’s ready to ship out immediately.
Furtex was experiencing a gap between receiving raw materials and selling finished goods. RF-SMART’s Assembly Builds is the middle piece that will give visibility into raw materials, help control waste, and allow them to create finished goods.
RESULTS
RF-SMART and NetSuite together has boosted Furtex’s overall productivity and efficiency. “Using RF-SMART, our on-time picks have increased from 73% to 99%, and we’re now completing 25% more orders – increasing productivity without increasing headcount. RF-SMART helps us work smarter. Employees are saving time and effort, and every minute we can save on a task adds up over multiple employees, which multiplies over the course of the week, month and year.”
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