The furniture and fixture manufacturing industry faces a number of challenges for businesses to remain competitive, meet industry and safety standards, and design, sell, and manufacture highly customized products efficiently.
DriveWorks design automation and CPQ for manufacturing technology enables furniture and fixture manufacturers to overcome these challenges by automating design workflows, streamlining the sales and quoting process, and automatically creating documents and data for manufacturing. This means manufacturers can meet the increasing demand for highly customized products, reduce the risk of costly design and production errors, and accelerate delivery times.
Supply chain disruptions
The furniture and fixture manufacturing industry faces challenges in the supply of high-quality materials and components. Supply chain disruptions can have a negative impact on costs, delivery times, production, and quality assurance.
Sourcing some types of wood and metal can be difficult due to changing environmental regulations, supplier relationships, and logistics issues.
DriveWorks enables furniture and fixture manufacturers to make agile design changes. In response to supply chain disruptions or material availability changes, manufacturers can quickly adapt furniture configurations without extensive manual reengineering, so they can reduce the impact of disruptions and maintain production efficiency.
Labor shortages & skills gaps
Like many other manufacturing industries, recruiting and retaining skilled labor is an ongoing challenge for furniture manufacturers. Recruiting new staff and retaining current employees can be difficult, and labor shortages can put pressure on production costs and efficiency.
DriveWorks reduces the dependency on highly-skilled design engineers by automating repetitive design tasks, opening up vacancies to candidates with less experience. DriveWorks rules-based design automation solution doesn’t require previous coding knowledge, making it easy to use, and existing employees can be up-skilled.
By removing repetitive, time-consuming tasks, design automation frees up engineers to focus on higher-value work such as product development and innovation. This in turn can lead to improved job satisfaction and staff retention rates.
Sustainability considerations
The demand for sustainable and eco-friendly materials requires furniture and fixture manufacturers to adopt a strategy of continuous innovation. Ensuring furniture complies with environmental regulations and standards can also be time-consuming and expensive.
DriveWorks design automation solution is rules-based, so furniture and fixture manufacturers easily update configurations to incorporate sustainability considerations into the design process.
With the automation of repetitive design tasks, design engineers have more time to focus on the development of products made from sustainable materials to keep pace with customer demand.
Quality and safety compliance
The furniture and fixture manufacturing industry is subject to a wide range of quality and safety standards. Requirements can vary across different countries, making compliance even more challenging for manufacturers who sell internationally. Failing to meet standards can results in fines and product recalls, and long-term damage to brand reputation.
DriveWorks ensures consistency in furniture and fixture design by using standardized rules and parameters. This maintains product quality and compliance across both custom and standardized furniture components. Additionally, DriveWorks can be configured to ensure that furniture and fixture designs automatically comply with relevant regulatory safety and quality standards across different markets.
Online sales
Customer preference, both business and consumer, to make custom furniture and fixture purchases online, requires an effective digital sales strategy with a user-friendly online sales configuration platform. Customers want the ability to visualize their configured furniture products and get accurate pricing.
DriveWorks 3D product configurator solution enables buyers to visualize their configuration options and design details, so they can make decisions faster. Customers, sales teams, and distributors configure custom furniture and fixture products in a browser on any device, anywhere.
When customers can visualize their custom options, they are more likely to make an informed purchase, resulting in frictionless buying experiences and improved customer satisfaction.
Competition & consumer preference
Competing with low-cost producers, particularly from countries with lower labor costs, puts pressure on pricing and margins. Rapidly changing consumer preferences and staying up to date with changing design trends put additional pressure on design engineers to keep pace with new product designs.
DriveWorks technology enables furniture manufacturers to optimize pricing strategies by factoring in real-time material costs, labor, and other variables. This ensures that pricing remains competitive while maintaining profitability.
Furniture design engineers are freed up to work on new product innovation because DriveWorks design automation technology handles the majority of the “same but different” design work.
Meeting furniture customization requirements with DriveWorks
Maglin Site Furniture is a leading North American manufacturer of public site furnishings, including seating, tables, waste containers, bike racks, and planters for public gathering areas. Through outstanding design and innovative use of recycled materials, they create high quality solutions that enhance the aesthetics and functionality of all environments.
Maglin started using DriveWorks to get to manufacturing quicker and speed up their cash conversion cycle.
Maglin use DriveWorks as the CPQ solution for three of their furniture lines. Each line is built to order with thousands of possible configurations.
Before using DriveWorks, a Maglin sales rep would record the customer’s required specification and request a drawing. An engineer would create the drawing and send it to the customer for approval before production could begin. Now, using DriveWorks, sales reps can automatically create drawings based on the chosen configuration. While configuring, the system continually updates in real time, with live, accurate pricing. When the design session is over, the customer has drawings and a model to insert into their site drawings, plus a quotation. DriveWorks is integrated with Maglin’s freight partner’s database, so accurate shipping costs are generated automatically.
Maglin’s previous drawing approval process took up to two weeks. If the customer required changes, that timeline could be up to a month. Now, sales reps automatically create drawings with the customer, in one design session, without taking up design engineer time.
DriveWorks has automated time-consuming and repetitive design tasks, freeing up designers to use their creativity to design new products. As the sales cycle is quicker, overall business revenue is increasing, and they can add more designers to the team. The sales team also has more time to focus on customer service and retention, which is critically important to Maglin.
“Our sales people now have more time to maximize the use of our CRM. They can see who has been working on layouts online and give people a call to talk about their needs. We want new clients and new projects – that’s the most valuable use of their time.”
Aaron Dawson, Director of Manufacturing at Maglin
Configure, design, sell, and manufacture furniture and fixtures faster
DriveWorks technology enables you to accurately configure custom furniture and fixture products, calculate pricing, and automatically create documents and data for sales and manufacturing.
Learn more about DriveWorks technology and how your business could benefit with a DriveWorks demo. One of our technical experts will be able to take you under the hood of our technology and explain the features of our design automation, product configurator, and CPQ for manufacturing solutions in more detail.