Customer Information

As an internationally renowned enterprise, Trayton Group is also one of the largest furniture manufacturers and retailers in China. Founded in 1995, the group is headquartered in Shanghai and has sales offices in Europe and the United States. Trayton has offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Jiashan in China and in High Point, North Carolina in USA. Trayton employes around 2,000 people, and own and operate 3 factories with a total of 150,000m2 of manufacturing facilities. Trayton has one of the highest rates of productivity per worker in the industry, and one of the best records regarding quality and delivery efficiency. "Honest management, moral business, classic creation and perfection" are the tenets of Trayton. The company always adhere to the first-class management, first-class quality, first-class service, and constantly create classic, and constantly shape the perfect service concept, to win the support and reputation of customers and friends.

A total of five brands are operated by the Trayton Group.

Customer Feedback

"Microsoft Dynamics AX is an ERP system that can adapt to the process changes brought about by future development. It allows Trayton Group to realize the integration of finance and business, solving the disconnection between financial and business data caused by the large number of information silos in the original system, thus providing a comprehensive and integrated management information system for the enterprise."

—— Simon Lichtenberg, CEO of Trayton Group

Project Background

With the rapid growth of the Trayton Group's global business and the increasing spread of branches, factories, offices, etc., the Group had to improve its legacy system with powerful functions to link all business segments, meet the integration of different resources and information for finance, logistics and production planning, provide professional production guidance and fine financial cost control, and better support and drive the growing business needs.

Solution

As the first authorized project of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 in China, the consultant team leveraged the new application platform of AX 2012 to create a cross-industry solution for Trayton that combines the characteristics of multiple industries such as furniture manufacturing, fabric cutting and import/export management.

> Product design and quotation management

One of the problems that has been perplexing the sales supply chain of Trayton is that due to the customization particularity of sofa furniture industry, there is almost no fixed BOM structure and process route for the finished products. For 70% of the customers' requests, the sales staff should first send the demand information to the R&D department to design the product structure and process, then transfer to the financial department to generate the estimated cost, and then transfer to the planning department to estimate the delivery date. When all the information is fed back to the sales department, it usually takes 4-5 working days.

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, through the product generator module, all the relevant elements of customer product design, such as sofa style, armrest, cushion, size, wood, board, fabric, etc., are entered into the system as model variables, and the internal logical relationship between different variables is established. After receiving the customer demand, the sales staff only need to fill in a standard questionnaire about the product information in the product configuration interface, and the system can automatically calculate the BOM consumption, process route, standard cost and the expected delivery time of sales according to the selected variables and the preset logical relationship. Thus, the sales staff can make the fastest response to the customer's needs based on accurate engineering, cost and planning information within one working day.

>Workshop management

Based on the standard manufacturing function of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, and combined with the characteristics of Trayton furniture industry. The workshop management module of Trayton has developed a series of functions, such as consolidated picking, automatic proportional allocation of quantitative materials, bar code scanning and reporting of working hours, bar code in and out of warehouse and so on, which greatly improves the operation efficiency of workshop workers and ensures the accuracy of data.

>Container management

As the extension and effective supplement of ERP products, the container management module can set the loading capacity of classified containers and the delivery cycle of carriers. When packing, the physical loading position of products in each container can be recorded, and the shipping mark (export packing list) can be generated. It meets the requirement of organic combination of ERP system and logistics information.

>Customs manual management

The customs manual management of bonded materials is a common problem for all export enterprises. The customs manual management module of Trayton can realize the functions of registering the limited usage of bonded materials, registering the purchase usage of bonded materials, recording and limiting the production and use of bonded materials, tracking the usage of bonded materials in finished products, and generating customs usage reports. It fills the blank of traditional ERP for customs manual management solution.

Business Benefits

Through the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 system, Trayton integrates its original isolated IT systems (financial management system, logistics control system, production planning system, product design system, budget control system, etc.) into a unified Microsoft ERP system management platform. Thus, the operation efficiency of the enterprise and the integration of logistics, information flow, capital flow and document flow are greatly improved, and the cross-border transfer of business process is realized. At the same time, data mining, tracing and analysis also provide decision support function for the management, so that the system can really play the role of business support, improve efficiency and decision support.

In addition, the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 system platform brings about improvements to Trayton:

-Unified information platform to achieve data standardization and normalization：as the main data part of ERP system implementation basis, standardization and normalization are the most basic requirements. However, due to the independence of several previous business systems of Trayton, the long-term use has caused a series of problems, such as unclear master data rules, inconsistent coding rules, data overlap and so on. Through the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 system, this paper analyzes, plans and redefines the master data of Trayton in detail.

-Process optimization: the process of ERP system implementation is also the process of enterprise carding, testing and re planning its own process. Through the integration of each functional module in ERP platform, Trayton realizes the process reorganization and optimization. In particular, the workflow definition of each main function module integrates the approval control separated from the system into each specific process control link of ERP.

-Sales response speed: product generator and quotation module customized based on the demand of Trayton furniture industry, which is a significant improvement in the speed of sales response customers, and directly improves the competitiveness of enterprises. At the same time, it also standardizes the design quotation process, which organically connects the work flow among the sales, production, design and financial departments.

-Financial integration: integration of Finance and business system, which enables transaction update of business system to be reflected in the update of financial data synchronously, ensuring the strict reliability of financial data generation, as well as the clarity and traceability of financial data source analysis and cost classification analysis.

-Budget control: compared with the previous manual budget, the new system is subdivided to the global budget of the business department / department or even each budget number. Any purchase application or expense application involving budget items must be strictly controlled in the system through the application workflow. It has played a significant role in the financial control of ERP system.

About Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a comprehensive business management solution for manufacturing and distribution companies around the world. The solution can help them manage their wide range of business areas more efficiently, including retail data and financial analysis, with special emphasis on achieving comprehensive real-time visibility of the entire supply chain. This integrated, customizable solution creates business value by:

▪ Enhance the enterprise's insight to help make reasonable decisions and provide visibility of all kinds of data for enterprise management

▪ Expand data and key processes to strengthen critical relationships with customers and partners, regardless of the systems they use and complexity

▪ Through the smooth integration with the existing enterprise ERP system and Microsoft product family, it can maximize the return on technology investment

▪ Through process optimization and automation, to improve productivity, optimize the supply chain, so as to reduce costs and improve profitability

▪ Can be customized to meet current needs, easy to grasp new business opportunities, and can more easily meet the personalized requirements of customers, so as to win in the competition

More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, please call Microsoft customer service hotline 800-820-3800 or visit the website of Microsoft (China) Co., Ltd http://www.microsoft.com/china/dynamics

For more information about IWS, Microsoft's gold partner, please visit our website: http://www.iwstech.com