Schiffer Manufacturing is a substantial manufacturer of cupboard door and bench top products principally for the kitchen installation industry.
As an associated company of a major laminates group Schiffer manufactures a significant range of products in materials including cupboard doors, panels and bench tops in MDF or natural timber, form press vinyl, or aluminum in an incredible choice of profiles, edge and pattern or paint finishes as well as an enormous diversity of sizes both custom and to order.
Schiffer Manufacturing commercial manager Brett Mitchell said that the sheer diversity represented a difficult range of products to manage, particularly when manufacturing volume has doubled over a two year period.
"We came to the conclusion we desperately needed a production system to match our current needs and our future growth.
"For instance we operated three manual input systems for quoting, job entry into our optimizer software for production and then for invoicing our clients.
"We sought an ERP software program which would enable us to improve our efficiency by overcoming multiple manual entry tasks, reducing the scope for errors, enhance our management decisions and in turn meet our forward growth expectations." Brett added.
The outcome was the location of the ERP Software, M1 by B&G™, from Bowen & Groves which Schiffer installed in March 2001.
"We were immediately impressed by its capacity and the ability to readily customize M1 to our specific needs.
"We have also received excellent support from Bowen & Groves and we consider that M1's abilities are virtually unlimited and you derive considerable benefits by a willingness to learn.
"Now we only key in data once prior to exporting the data to our optimizer software which both minimizes data entry errors, save us time and ensures maximum yield from our raw materials.
"We have also recreated all our spreadsheet reports in M1 and have been able to customize all reports to suit both our own internal needs and those of our clients.
"We have been able to value add to our production process and using a price matrix with size ranges we can accurately report profit margins based on our production sizes.
"We will shortly commission the scheduling module which should further enhance our factory efficiency.
"The inventory management system allows us to track various sizes of board material both full sheet and offcuts.
"The reorder report also tells us what we need to add to our purchasing."
Brett added that Schiffer's experience with M1 from Bowen & Groves has "been fantastic".
"M1 has been a best fit for a company of our size with a limited budget plus it has given us the capacity for to accommodate our future growth."
M1 by Bowen & Groves now Version 3.0, has over 300 installed sites across a wide diversity of manufacturing applications in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada and the UK.
As an ERP software platform specifically developed for the small to medium sized manufacturing sector it has won a high level of user satisfaction with strong technical support while representing a very cost effective solution for the industrial sector.
About Bowen & Groves
Bowen & Groves is setting the standard in Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP), for the small to medium manufacturer. Founded in 1992 Bowen & Groves is a privately owned software development company operating in the United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. M1 by B&G™ sets the standard in affordability and ease of use.
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