Upholstered furniture that is neither overstuffed nor sparsely padded, and still within your price range. Sound like an utopian dream? Not at all. The furniture of tomorrow is being manufactured today at M-Gold's DesignLine in Talorsville, NC.
Begun about five years ago as a partnership between M-Gold, the Watson family and designer Bob Williams, the companies' revenue had more than tripled by the end of 1992. Steve Watson, Vice President of operations, credits this dramatic increase to three things: filling the niche of fashion-forward furniture at a moderate price point, carefully planned marketing, and fully implementing the KeyMan Manufacturing Series on their Data General Aviion that serves nine terminals, including one in the plant.
M-Gold's DesignLine maintains a staff of about 85 year-round in order to manufacture a variety of upholstered products, including sofas, dining chairs, and occasional chairs with matching ottomans. From a stockpile of 235 fabrics, orders are filled combining an array of options, including: fabric, contrast welt, combination fabric, finish, self-decking, throw pillows, and carton/packaging.
"We used to handle all of the work orders and production tickets by hand. One lady spent all week in front of the typewriter, just typing production tickets. We reached the point that we knew we needed a better system for work orders, estimating and inventory control. KeyMan offered us this without requiring a lot of customization costs to have reports that we could use. Once we got on-line with KeyMan, the accuracy of the production tickets increased, while the time required drastically decreased," explained Watson. "So, we purchased all of the KeyMan Manufacturing modules -- Sales Order Processing, Work Order Control, Inventory Control, Purchasing, Estimating and Standards, and Material Resource Planning."
As each work order is released, a form called a production ticket is printed on perforated card stock. One ticket is printed for each unit, and the ticket consists of two large 'header' tickets, and 25 smaller 'detail' tickets. The printed tickets identify which operations and raw materials are required for the work order, follows the work through the plant identifying materials, facilitates production reporting, and serves as a shipping label.
The company has defined and delineated the categories that their markets fall into: National accounts, such as JCPenny and Federated Department Stores; Specialty retailers, like Crate & Barrel; Independent furniture companies, like Gaberts; Catalogs, such as Pottery Barn; Contract orders; and Exports. "Our focus is to sell to the very best retailers in each niche," said Mitchell Gold, President. " When we started, we determined that to get and keep the business of the finest retailers we had to have state-of-the-art systems to make our promises possible. And KeyMan has played an enormous role in making our goals a reality."
"The Estimating and Standards module is the cornerstone of the entire system and a real time saver. When we were figuring estimates manually, if the price of one component changed, we had to do the necessary work to refigure an accurate cost for EACH item that used that component. Now the computer handles the calculations for us." Watson continues, "Additionally, since we develop dozens of new styles every six months for the High Point Furniture Market, we use this module to copy an existing product standard and make the necessary changes to have up-to-date information on a new product. This is such a time saver: five years ago it was a long tedious chore that is now just a push of some buttons!"
M-Gold's DesignLine's customer base, as well as their merchandise assortment has seen rapid growth over the past five years. KeyMan has served them well through their continued expansion and the system's adaptability has been important to the company as well. KeyMan helped the company formalize business controls so both lead time and inventory carrying costs have decreased. In addition to these benefits, Watson says, "Although our business has tripled, we've only had to add two supervisory positions since we began with KeyMan. KeyMan has provided some very real savings for our company."
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