Martin’s Wood Products

"Our business evolves around the Global Shop Configurator. We can quickly configure hundreds of thousands of options of furniture, accurately price the options, and put an accurate work order on the shop floor automatically, consistently, every time. Providing this level of service and such a vast product line has set us apart and gained a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Global Shop has given us the tools to automate from order entry, through the many manufacturing processes, all the way to shipping, all the while tracking inventory and labor in real time. Accurate job costing has enabled us to price accurately and competitively to ensure profitable growth."

~ James Martin
Martin’s Wood Products, General Manager

They say that a personal approach to finely-crafted wood furniture is a lost art in the United States. In a world of plastic and particleboard, the centuries-old tradition of taking a piece of American hardwood like Appalachian oak or Pennsylvania cherry, and turning it into an heirloom chair or table is simply not worth the effort. Well, don’t tell that to the Martin family of Meyerstown, Pennsylvania. Nestled into the rolling Amish farmlands of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Martins have been producing some of the best solid wood furniture made in America for over 20 years.

However, theirs is neither a typical industrial job shop, nor a sleepy backyard shed woodworking operation. Martin’s Wood Products (MWP) is a highly sophisticated custom furniture manufacturer whose lineage of family management has kept pace with the technological and enterprise resource planning (ERP) advances of the 21st century. According to MWP’s General Manager James Martin, one reason they’ve been able to continue to craft and sell the highest quality, American-made solid wood furniture is due to their decision to acquire Global Shop Solutions ERP software in 2003. "We found out about Global Shop through researching many different ERP software products. While doing this, I received an invitation to a seminar that Global Shop was holding in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I went, and their discussion and software demonstration really raised my interest. So, after speaking with them further, we purchased the Global Shop system, and I must say that we’ve had great success with Global Shop from day one," Martin explains. "We have liked working with them ever since."

For MWP, the Global Shop system, as well as the company itself, was a natural alliance not only in terms of the ERP software needed to bring costing under control, but also in the similar basic business philosophies held by the two companies. Both MWP and Global Shop are family-owned and operated businesses where exemplary customer service and employee relations are vital to their success. It is the Global Shop personal approach to doing business that first appealed to MWP—in Global Shop, MWP saw their own traditions of consistent quality business management style and execution. Martin observes, "Like Martin’s Wood Products, Global Shop is a customer intimate business. That’s just one of many reasons why they’re a perfect fit for us."

MWP is a multifaceted production operation. They’re a made-to-order manufacturing business that produces custom work as well as carrying a standard product line. As malleable as wood is in the hands of the master craftsmen at MWP, there are nearly an endless array of options possible with their product furniture designs—different configurations, hardware, color choices, styles, sizes, and shapes. For example, in the subcategory of finishes alone, MWP customers can choose any number of colors and/or textures in general categories such as stained, glazed, painted, distressed, and planed. Ultimately, there must be a central database where various design options can be considered and ordered. And a powerful software tool to make it happen. Global Shop’s Configurator application fills the bill.

Martin explains, "The Global Shop Configurator helps our customers to choose from the millions of different options available to them within our manufacturing services. And, it’s all automated—automated pricing, automated part number, automated description, automated router. In other words, we’ve made our process as automated as possible—from the order entry on out, and that has given us great flexibility in what we can provide to our customers. Global Shop has elevated customer service for us to a niched marketing capability. With the Global Shop Configurator, we exceed customer expectations of quality and product selection, and we’re able to keep everything in the production process in order and running smoothly."

Automation has also been a boon to MWP in shop floor management. In an era where business survival depends on strict cost accounting, where pennies of material cost saved per part can mean the difference between major profits or narrow loss, shop floor management becomes increasingly important. It is here where Global Shop ERP applications excel. In fact, MWP is heavily tied to the use of Global Shop’s graphical user interface (GUI) as terminals on the shop floor where employees can clock on and off a job, requisition materials, and monitor myriad other job processes.

"We use Global Shop all around the shop for both accounting and manufacturing," Martin states. "Through the GUI system that is use throughout the plant, we’re very, very focused on tracking our job costing on the shop floor. For this reason, Global Shop is a complete package where accounting and manufacturing are all tied together in real time and in one single and easy to use database—it’s simply one-stop ERP shopping for us, and it makes cost accounting an important part of our daily management."

When it comes to the success that MWP has achieved since their implementation of Global Shop, the facts speak for themselves. In addition to enhancing their on-time delivery, Global Shop has facilitated a better way of doing business in just about every area of the sprawling MWP plant. "Global Shop has helped us succeed in inventory management and control. In the first three months of implementing Global Shop, we dropped our inventory six digits." Martin exclaims. "Now, I get inventory in as I need it—just in time. Global Shop has tremendously helped our lean journey, helped us lean all shop floor operations from work order generation to shipping out the door. As the general manager, I am particularly pleased with the overall Global Shop shop floor management system, and its tremendous capability at controlling costs of labor and material."

The success MWP has realized since acquiring their Global Shop system can give hope to custom manufacturers across the nation. With strong ties to their local community, enduring customer-oriented business philosophy, plus their use of cutting-edge ERP technology, MWP is an ideal realization of manufacturing success. That MWP sees their use of their Global Shop system in strategic terms means that their crafted wood heritage will not be lost; rather, the best practices business management approach offered by Global Shop helps to ensure that Martin’s Wood Products should continue their unique American craftsmanship for generations of Martins to come.