Conquer Woodworking Manufacturing Challenges with Dynamic Q2S ERP

As a woodworking manufacturer, you know the production issues and challenges when every order or item you make is different. The higher the volume and shorter the lead times, the bigger the impact of inefficiency and possibilities for errors.

This is especially true if you’re managing pricing and production in spreadsheets, by SKU or a single-level bill of materials generator. These systems are simply not designed for make-to-order manufacturing.

You’re looking for a better way. You likely want to reduce time to price and fabricate, be more flexible, accurately track jobs and labor and reduce errors—and make it so product configuration and pricing can be done many people rather than just one or two.

You need a system designed to manage complex products production. A system like Q2S ERP.

Woodworking manufacturing issues

In woodworking manufacturing, the challenges start with estimating.

Just the combinations of height, width, thickness, wood type, shape and design create so many possibilities that accurately configuring and pricing orders quickly gets complicated and time-consuming.

Add finish, fabrication and hardware choices and your products can have practically unlimited variations, each requiring a different BOM.

Without a system designed to manage dynamic products like yours, you can easily under or overprice. You can estimate something your operation can’t make. It can take so long to price you lose orders. Or your staff is always waiting on the one or two people who know how to configure products and create estimates.

And Job costing, which is critical and complicated in woodworking manufacturing, gets difficult because, among other reasons, labor is highly variable, making standard estimates difficult to create and maintain.

The list of challenges for dynamic product manufacturing goes on: inventory control, production scheduling, job tracking, identifying replacement parts and more.

A dynamic ERP for woodworking

When your products are dynamic, your ERP should be as well. Q2S ERP features a dynamic, multi-level and rules-based BOM generator built precisely for the complex and mass customized product manufacturing in the woodworking industry.

With the Q2S BOM, you conquer complexity.

You can free engineering staff from the order entry process. Your team can configure and price products, schedule jobs, monitor production, measure actual costs and more.

And with Q2S, your customers can enter orders because Q2S Configure Price Quote simplifies the quote and order entry process.

Customers entering their own orders?

The dynamic BOM generator converts your company’s engineering and production rules—complicated or simple—into a series of standard questions. By answering those questions, dealers and contractors can configure and price products for their orders.

You can even take it one step further and enable these customers to configure and quote your products to their customers at a markup.

The BOM rules ensure only manufacturable orders are quoted. You can build in the restrictions based on rating agencies, transportation, safety and equipment capabilities. Automatically.

Keeping track …

Do you have too much raw material tying up space? Only know inventory based on weekly cycle counts? Can’t tell the difference between stock and purchased-as-needed inventory, let alone keep track of it all?

Let Q2S ERP’s Materials Management tools help.

Q2S differentiates stock inventory from purchased-as-needed inventory. When used with our Dynamic BOM, you can account for all required parts. Stock inventory is allocated and purchased-as-needed materials can automatically generate one or hundreds of purchase orders tied to a single job.

You also get real-time updates of WIP and finished goods using a perpetual inventory model. This level of integration creates visibility of what’s received and more importantly, what has not been received, on a job-by-job and line-item-by-line-item basis, or across all active jobs.

… to keep on track

Do you need a way to document processes? Q2S ERP’s Production Workflow tools help you with sequencing work, material optimization, and tracking progress to ensure on-time delivery.

Which helps you make it right the first time and prevent the return.

You can go paperless or barcode everything. You can determine which product options get the most returns and easily create production pop-ups to alert the production floor when that option is included.

Proactively alert production if a step has been missed. Warn downstream stations of potential issues with an item. You can add supporting documentation for difficult steps.

Plus tracking your progress allows the office to see product and job status without interrupting production.

Update a BOM in process

In woodworking, changes happen on the floor.

With Q2S ERP, your workers can edit quantities and swap materials within a BOM on the shop floor. This provides an accurate inventory without cycle counting and gives you accurate job costing. Plus you’ll be able to review expected versus actual material consumption for the job.

A dynamic and flexible solution

Q2S ERP offers a flexible solution for the evolving needs of woodworking manufacturers—from sales to shipment and everything in between. Contact info@q2serp.com to schedule a discussion to see if we are a fit.