Shortening production accounting time from 4 days to 2 hours
The owner of a furniture company received material cost reports with a significant delay. We integrated the board cutting system with the cost sheet, providing margin insights immediately.
The owner of Meble Beskid wasted a lot of time checking if a given project was even profitable. Board and edgebanding invoices came separately, and floor data arrived on crumpled sheets. We showed that the floor must earn, not stand idle due to bureaucracy, and implemented a system that calculates margin almost in real-time.
The challenge
In March 2024, the plant in Maków Podhalański employed 14 carpenters. Each recorded material consumption on paper orders, which then went to the office in folders. Anna, who handled accounting, needed an average of 3.5 business days to total the costs of one batch of kitchen furniture. It often turned out that due to a sudden 7.4% price increase from the board supplier, the company earned only 310 PLN on an order instead of the planned 1,900 PLN. The error was only noticed after the fact, when the furniture was already with the client and the invoice couldn't be corrected. Numbers don't lie if you know how to read them, but here nobody saw them on time.
Our approach
Our 3-person team spent 4 business days directly on the production floor, observing how the crew cuts boards on CNC machines. We didn't want to add work for the carpenters because the system should make work easier, not add more clicking. First, we cleaned the material index database in the old sheet – we found 470 items, of which over 80 were duplicates of the same oak decor under different names. We established one naming standard and prepared an integration that pulls cutting data directly from the software controlling the saws, without involving operators in unnecessary paperwork.
The solution
We implemented a lightweight analytical module connected to the machines' database and the company's purchasing system. Now, every production file sent to the CNC automatically reserves the correct amount of square meters of board in a virtual warehouse. We added a 'Live Margin' function that pulls current prices from the most recently entered purchase invoices. No more manual data transcription – upon entering the office, the owner sees on the monitor that today's batch of wardrobes generated exactly 4,215 PLN in margin. The system even accounts for estimated electricity costs and carpenter labor based on real hours clocked on readers.
Results
The company regained full control over the profitability of every order and stopped taking projects that generated a loss. Anna now focuses on optimizing purchases from suppliers instead of spending half the week with a calculator and a pile of sheets.
Timeline
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February 2024Information flow audit and cleaning of the 470 material database
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March 2024Building a data bridge between CNC machines and the margin module
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April 2024Launch of analytical panels for the owner and accounting
"I was skeptical about tablets in the workshop. I was afraid dust would destroy them and people would quit. Now the guys check for themselves in the system how much material is left, and I finally know exactly what my net profit is."