Reid MFG

The Company: About Reid MFG

Reid MFG LLC is a small, rapidly growing manufacturer of custom commercial and residential Euro-style cabinets, 3D laminated thermo-foil components, and custom machined door systems based in Oklahoma City. With steady growth driving the business since its establishment in 1995, Reid MFG has continually sought to increase cash flow and make informed decisions to maximize profitability and grow the company.

The Situation: Data Integration

The primary difficulty Reid faced as they continued to grow was the lack of integration of data from their custom product configuration and quoting processes through the actual fulfillment of orders in production.“ There was a gap between quoting and production in our shop, which became confusing and inefficient as our operation grew,” says Lance Court, Director of Operations at Reid MFG

The Solution: Cetec ERP

Why did Cetec ERP make sense for a company in job shops & woodworking?

Every machine shop, woodworking, or job shop understands how critical it is to accurately predict and analyze profitability. Woodworking companies and job-focused custom manufacturers appreciate Cetec ERP for its simple, comprehensive tracking of necessary BOM material, labor, overhead, and equipment-related cost all the way through, from Quote to Cash.

“The ERP software we were using before Cetec ERP did not let us enter data on the shop floor, so there was no way to get good labor or capture any real production cost. We did our best writing it down on paper and entering the data into the software later, but it was never right.”

For Reid MFG, a small job shop with limited IT budget, it made practical and budgetary sense to deploy inexpensive mobile tablets as data collection kiosks in production that integrated directly into the order fulfillment and invoicing processes. Cetec ERP represented an affordable and effective solution for the major pain points at the Reid MFG operation, including:

• Integration with E‑Commerce application and web-based furniture product configurator
• User-friendly quoting tools and the ability for inside sales to collaborate with engineering and purchasing
• Ability to create new parts and BOMs on the fly within the Quoting module
• Automated multi-level BOM and subassembly support with automatic creation of subassembly work orders tied to top-level order
• Cloud-based system to enable deployment of iPads on the shop floor for job routing, labor tracking, production data collection, and inspections
• Total access to ERP system from within web browser
• Labor estimate versus actual variance reporting and total job profitability analysis and drill-down
• Automatic inventory control through job booking, fulfillment, and invoicing
• Easy for shop personnel to learn and operate without too many clicks
• Affordability; small shop with little to spend on expensive software.

The Results: Cetec ERP Implementation Benefits

Reid MFG, LLC began to see concrete value from the Cetec ERP implementation almost immediately. Director of operations Lance Court recalls one day when Cetec ERP alerted him to an operation that was taking much longer than usual.

“I went to investigate, and it turns out one of the drill bits on my machine broke, so it was only drilling one bit at a time instead of five at a time. Because of the real-time job tracking in Cetec ERP, I was able to catch that immediately in the process, instead of after the job was already done,” said Court.

Cetec ERP continues to provide direct cost savings, shortened production lead times, and higher profits on Reid MFG jobs. Reid MFG, LLC had no trouble implementing the system at their shop and accomplished the entire project remotely with little to no training.

“I was able to figure most of the things out on my own. I didn’t even have to get training. It was easy to implement and install. The biggest hurdle was training employees to record their time, and getting that discipline down for folks who were not used to entering data in production.”