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ERP Software for Furniture Manufacturers

See how furniture manufacturers use Infor ERP to quote configured orders, control multi-level BOMs and hit ship dates. Talk to an ERP advisor

erp for furniture manufacturing

What an ERP for furniture manufacturing has to handle

An ERP for furniture manufacturing ties four things into one system: configured quoting, multi-level bills of material that hold every fabric and finish option, mixed-mode production across your own plants and your subcontractors, and shop floor scheduling you can promise dates against. 

Variant explosion.

Options multiply faster than any spreadsheet can track. Without a configurator tied to the BOM, someone is maintaining option lists by hand and pricing from memory.

Quote rework and configuration errors.

Options multiply faster than any spreadsheet can track. Without a configurator tied to the BOM, someone is maintaining option lists by hand and pricing from memory.

Material yield.

Timber, sheet goods, fabric and leather all get cut, and offcuts either get tracked or get thrown away. Actual yield against theoretical is one of the few numbers that moves margin directly.

Subcontract operations.

Finishing, upholstery and hardware often sit outside the system entirely, which means work in progress disappears for days at a time.

Promise dates.

Sales commits a ship date, the floor finds out later whether it was possible.

What Infor CloudSuite Industrial ERP does for furniture makers?

Designed specifically for companies that manufacture furniture for homes, offices, hotels, and public venues, along with retail fixtures and fittings. Manage a mix of configurable items, custom orders, and varied production approaches. Keep track of changing materials, finishes, fabrics, and design updates. Respond to increasingly short product cycles, coordinate outsourced work, and bring orders, production, and costs together in one unified platform.

Configured quoting with Infor CPQ

Dealers and customers configure their own orders through a guided interface, with 2D and 3D visuals so they see what they are buying. The estimated BOM that comes out of the configurator converts into a production order without anyone retyping it.

Explore Infor Configure-Price-Quote

Multi-level BOMs for options, dimensions and finishes

Hold options, dimensions, finishes and alternates in structured BOMs with version control, so a fabric discontinuation or a hardware substitution is a controlled change rather than a scramble. Alternate materials and alternate routings are part of the record, not a note in someone's inbox.

Mixed-mode production: ETO, MTO, CTO and repetitive

Engineer-to-order, make-to-order, configure-to-order and repetitive production run in one system, across multiple sites, subcontractors and suppliers. High volume and low mix on one line, low volume and high mix on the next, without splitting operations across two systems as complexity grows.

Scheduling and shop floor throughput

Scheduling built to maximise throughput, with real-time labour capture and quality assurance integrated into the same transactions. Work in progress is visible while it is still in progress.

Dealer portals and ecommerce

Integrated dealer web portals with self-guided configuration and quoting used to be a differentiator. They are now the baseline expectation for anyone selling through a dealer network. Orders arrive configured, priced and clean.

Warranty, repair and aftermarket service

Warranty claims, repairs and field service are part of the ERP rather than a separate spreadsheet, so aftermarket cost per unit is a number you can actually see.

Explore Infor CSI Field Service

Alerts, AI and machine learning

Embedded monitoring and alerts flag the exceptions worth looking at — a late supplier, a job trending over standard, a stock position about to bite. The point is a shorter gap between something going wrong and someone knowing.

Explore Infor Velocity Suite

ERP by material and segment

Species, grade and sheet goods tracked through cutting, machining and finishing, with yield measured against theoretical rather than assumed. Finishing queues are usually the constraint, and scheduling has to treat them that way.

Fabric and leather inventory behaves differently from board and hardware. Rolls, hides, dye lots and cut-and-sew operations all need their own handling, and frame subassemblies have to stay in step with the cut-and-sew schedule. Smith Brothers and Palliser both run Infor.

Weldments, powder coating and fabrication routings alongside assembly. If your furniture business also does fabrication work, the same system covers both.

Explore Infor ERP for Metal Fabricators

Moulding cycles, tooling and sharply seasonal demand. Grosfillex, a manufacturer of high-end outdoor resin furniture, runs Infor and has been adding automation and AI to processes that used to be manual.

Project-based orders behave differently again: submittals, phased installs, multi-site rollouts and long revision cycles before anything gets built. Workrite Ergonomics and The Worden Group are both in this space.

What an AI-powered ERP changes for furniture and fixtures?

Fewer moving parts to manage.

Custom work, standard assembly runs and outsourced finishing all live in the same system instead of three. There is one version of what has been ordered, what has been built and what is out at a subcontractor, so nobody is reconciling by email when demand changes.

Real-time costs visibility.

Labour, materials, subcontract charges and finished product cost are visible per job, on custom and assembly-based work alike. That is what makes quoting accurate, and accurate quoting is what holds a margin when material prices move.

Ship dates you can stand behind.

Orders, materials and capacity are planned against each other rather than in sequence, so promised dates reflect what the floor can actually do. When something slips, the effect on downstream orders shows up early enough to act on.

New products out the door faster. 

New lines, new materials and new design variations can be introduced more often without stalling current production, which matters when a fabric range changes or a dealer asks for something the catalogue does not cover yet.

Explore Infor Velocity Suite (AI-powered CloudSuite Industrial)

Do you need a non-complex customization solution for your customers or dealers? 

Try Infor CPQ

Showcase visuals developed by your engineers to customers and allow easy customizations. 

Infor CPQ, with its supported 2D and 3D modelling, allows your customer to see the product they will get while reducing the amount of communication time of your salespeople.

A Few Examples of Furniture Manufacturers Using Infor ERP

Evaluate ERP Systems for Furniture Manufacturers

ERP Evaluation Service

If you are weighing up furniture ERP software, the useful first conversation is about your product configuration and your bottleneck, not about features. Tell us what is slowing you down and we will tell you plainly whether Infor is the right answer.

Explore our ERP Evaluation Service

ERP Evaluation Toolkit

There are ten battle-tested tools we've refined over 50+ years of ERP selection consulting. Tick the ones you have interest in. These tools have been used by hundreds of manufacturers to choose the right system the first time. Download our ERP evaluation toolkit.

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Frequently Asked Questions

ERP for furniture manufacturing is a single system covering quoting, configuration, bills of material, purchasing, production scheduling, shop floor execution, inventory and finance for a furniture business. The furniture-specific part is how it handles configured products and multi-level BOMs that change with every fabric, finish and dimension option.

It depends on how configured your product is and how many sites you run. For mid-market manufacturers building configured or made-to-order furniture, Infor CloudSuite Industrial is a strong fit because configuration, mixed-mode production and dealer portals are native rather than bolted on. Smaller shops with fixed catalogues are often better served by lighter cloud MRP.

Explore ESS's ERP Evaluation Service

Yes, if it has a configurator tied to the BOM. Infor CPQ guides the dealer or customer through the options, prices the result, and converts the estimated BOM into a production order without manual re-entry, which is where most configuration errors come from.

Options, dimensions and finishes are held as structured levels within the BOM with version control, alternates and substitute routings. When a fabric is discontinued or a finish changes, the change is applied and tracked rather than rebuilt.

Mid-market furniture implementations are measured in months rather than weeks. The main drivers are the number of sites, the state of your item and BOM data, and whether a configurator is in scope at go-live.

Cost depends on user count, modules, deployment model and how much data cleanup and configuration the project needs. Cloud subscriptions spread the cost over time and remove server investment. Ask for a scoped quote against your own requirements.

Yes, and it is usually the better option. Cloud removes the upfront infrastructure cost, shortens deployment, and makes multi-site and remote access straightforward. On-premises remains appropriate for specific data residency or infrastructure reasons.

Yes. Material issued against material consumed is tracked at the job level, which gives actual yield against theoretical by product and by species or material. That comparison is where most furniture material savings are found.

At minimum: product configurator, engineering and BOM management, planning and scheduling, purchasing, shop floor data collection with quality, inventory and warehouse, sales order and dealer portal, plus finance. Field service and warranty matter if you support product after delivery.

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