Effective Tools for Product Configuration
Customers' needs are more influential than ever, which means that the ability to deliver customized furniture can give a company the competitive edge.
Changing Needs
In the furniture industry, the distribution chain tends to have significant influence over the types of furniture that are produced. As a result, many furniture manufacturers have undergone structural reorganization in recent years to become more flexible in terms of the collections they produce. Access to effective tools for product configuration makes such a process significantly easier.
It is common in the furniture industry to standardize input items so that a limited number of items create a wide variety of finished products. Thus systems must be able to handle an advanced form of attribute-based pricing as well as the ability to choose materials and operations from given attributes.
The Evolution from In-House to Standard Solutions
Traditionally the furniture industry used computer systems that were developed in-house and configured to cover the specific needs of one or a few companies. These systems tended to stress complete functionality within the customer order process, and were often integrated with standard solutions to cover financial management processes. One of the historical arguments for in-house development was the lack of standard solutions for industry-specific problems.
But as the structure of the industry has changed, so have the requirements for and the capabilities of enterprise solutions. Many companies are now "growing out of" their old solutions, with the built-in logic in the surrounding attribute-based management certainly being a factor. More and more the furniture industry has moved from make-to-stock to make-to-order or assembly-to-order production.
The Benefits of a Standard Solution
The notion of what is the best investment when selecting an enterprise solution is not what it used to be. More and more furniture companies have come to the conclusion that it is too expensive to install and maintain enterprise solutions that are developed in-house. Fortunately, standard enterprise solutions such as Lawson M3 Furniture have developed immensely in recent years to meet the furniture industry's demand for a flexible product spectrum.
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