Schedules on printed spreadsheets
Production schedules lived in Excel and were reprinted every time an order was expedited.
Acumatica Manufacturing Case Study
How POLYWOOD replaced a finance-only legacy ERP and a patchwork of applications with Acumatica Enterprise Manufacturing Edition.
About POLYWOOD
POLYWOOD makes outdoor furniture, including its best-selling Classic Adirondack chairs, from recycled milk jugs, detergent bottles and other plastics. Its on-site recycling facilities take in an average of 400,000 milk jugs a day. The company sells through retailers such as Target, Home Depot, Amazon and Wayfair, and has sold direct to consumers since 2018.
The Challenge
POLYWOOD deployed its prior ERP in 2010, when it had 100 employees, and used it only for finance. The rest of the business ran on paper, manual steps and a mix of separate applications. A custom-built manufacturing execution system (MES) later took over scheduling, warehouse management and serial-level inventory, but it did not share data with the ERP.
When the pandemic hit, transactions rose tenfold, and the business grows tenfold from its slow season to its peak each year. At peak, people from every department helped ship packages, and some worked 80-hour weeks. Processing more than 3,000 orders a day had become a problem.
POLYWOOD needed an affordable ERP, quickly, with an open API to connect its MES and room for a fast-growing workforce.
Production schedules lived in Excel and were reprinted every time an order was expedited.
Build records were handwritten and keyed in later, so a lost sheet meant stock that never shipped.
Some Magento orders reached the ERP with lines but no header, so they were never built or shipped.
The legacy ERP crashed every time an 80th user connected.
The Solution
POLYWOOD learned about Acumatica at a Magento conference. It skipped a formal RFP, ran a rule-out process, and found Acumatica supported everything it needed. It also valued the open API and licensing that does not charge by the number of users.
POLYWOOD moved to Acumatica and its connected applications all at once, because its existing systems were tightly interconnected. The switch was done before the April to June peak. That summer brought its biggest invoicing day, and the technology team was no busier than usual.
The custom MES now shares data with Acumatica, which runs MRP and inventory. Acumatica is the system of record for financials and bills of material, some of which used to live only in the MES. Shop floor and finance data now sit in one system of record.
Magento orders, including payment, flow into Acumatica automatically through a Kensium connector. Avalara applies the correct state sales tax, and dealers order through an Optimizely portal. Production and purchasing see new orders and build dates without waiting for the next day.
ShipHawk brings parcel, LTL and freight broker services into one platform and automates much of the paperwork, warehouse and inventory work that goes with shipping. Shipping times dropped, and office staff no longer stop their own work to help ship.
Reports and drill-downs in Acumatica, plus Velixo, let executives cut the data in ways they could not before and trace posting errors more easily. Finance pulls data quickly instead of updating large spreadsheets from exports. The books close three days faster, with real-time data.
The Result
POLYWOOD now ships virtually everything on time at peak, and it can add users or whole departments without buying new seat licenses. The company is moving into designer furniture, with new Designer Series collections and an 11,000-square-foot showroom in Atlanta.
Books close three days faster, without manual spreadsheet exports.
The MES and Acumatica share MRP, inventory and bills of material.
Shorter shipping times, and office staff no longer pulled in to help ship.
The 65-person team now builds new things instead of constantly fixing bugs.