Furniture and wood
AI automation for furniture manufacturers
Casegoods, upholstery and OEM work run on drawings, spec sheets and changes. The floor is skilled. The office around it still re-types, chases and rebuilds the same spreadsheet every week. That office is where I start.
- Purchase requestsSigned on paper in many export factories, then keyed into a PO by hand.
- Planning packsRebuilt by hand before each meeting, from exports that are already out of date.41% of planning time goes on preparing data (CEL consultancy survey, June 2023; sample size not published)
- Order changesA finish or quantity change has to reach planning, purchasing and the floor at once.
- $14 to $54+what one purchase order costs to process, before anyone has chased it.APQC procurement benchmarks, April 2026
Who this is for
Built for furniture and wood factories
Export furniture factories making casegoods, upholstery and mixed-material pieces, for their own brand or as OEM for buyers in the US and Europe. From one plant to several sites, with a planning team, a purchasing team and an office that runs on an ERP, the inbox and a lot of spreadsheets.
The work you do
Casegoods and upholstery, veneer and solid wood, metal and hardware, finishing, packing for a 40HQ. Samples, mock-ups and approvals before every order.
The people you serve
Brands and retailers who change orders, ask for status and expect the ship date to hold, while tariffs and paperwork keep moving.
The mess
What lands on the desk
- A buyer revises a finish code and three quantities by email. Planning hears on Monday; purchasing hears on Thursday.
- A purchase request signed on paper, keyed into the system by someone else, then chased by a third person.
- The planning pack rebuilt by hand every week, from exports that are out of date before the meeting starts.
- Veneer, hardware and fabric bought "just in case", because nobody trusts the stock figure.
- Supplier confirmations sitting in one inbox, with dates that never reached the plan.
As of October 2026: US Section 232 tariffs on upholstered wooden furniture and kitchen cabinets are set to step up on 1 January 2027, and the EU deforestation rules apply to large and medium companies from 30 December 2026. Both add paperwork and pressure on lead times. I do not give trade or customs advice; I take the re-typing out of the paperwork your team already does.Source: White House fact sheet on timber and lumber import adjustments, 31 December 2025; EUDR timeline reported by Viet Nam News, 13 February 2026.
The pattern
The same work, without the re-typing
Today
- The change landsBy email, on paper or in the system, with one person.
- Someone works out who it affectsPlanning, purchasing, the work centres, the shipping team.
- Calls, emails and walking overEasy for someone to be left out.
- A signature on paper, then re-keyedThe system catches up days later.
With the automation
- The change is picked up as it arrivesFrom the email, the form or the system.
- Checked against the plan and the stockEveryone it affects is listed, with what changes for each.
- A short note drafted for each personWith the suggested action.
- A person approves with one clickRecords update, everyone hears the same day, open items stay flagged.
An example process, not a client story. The workshop decides which process comes first.
The build
What I would build first
Purchase request to PO
Requests approved on screen, the PO created from the approved request, and the supplier confirmation matched back to it, with no re-keying in between.
The planning pack, ready before the meeting
Pulled from the systems you already run and put together automatically, so the meeting starts with today's numbers.
Order changes that reach everyone
A changed order is checked against the plan and the stock, and everyone it affects hears about it the same day.
Supplier follow-up
Every open PO chased until it is confirmed. Dates that slip reach planning before they bite.
Purchasing reports as it happens
What was bought against what was needed, visible this week rather than next month.
You do not need all of these. One process comes first, chosen with your team, and a person approves everything that changes a record or reaches a buyer.
Do the math
What would one process give back?
Signing, chasing and re-keying each request into a PO. 250 requests at 12 minutes are example figures; time a few of yours.
Type your own figure. Only hours are shown until you do.
Adjust my assumptions
48 hours is the legal maximum week; about 2,312 hours worked a year after leave and public holidays. On-costs: 21.5% insurance + 2% union fee, on salary up to 50.6m VND a month.
Cycle time
Stock (optional)
Quotes won (freight follow-up)
38 hours back a month
9 people-weeks a year (0,19 of a full-time person)
Request to done:
Add a monthly salary to see this in money.
250 x 9 minutes saved / 60 = 38 hours a month.
This is an illustration with your numbers. A sit-in measures the real ones.
Link copied. It carries your numbers, never your salary.
Opened from a shared link. Salaries are never shared, so add your own to see money.
How this works, and where the defaults come from
- Hours a month = volume x (minutes today minus minutes after) / 60. People-weeks = hours a year / the standard week.
- Money is a band: the ceiling counts every freed hour at the loaded cost of the person; expected counts half of it, because not every freed minute becomes useful work; cautious takes a further 20% off.
- Stock: the yearly carrying saving is counted; the one-time cash released is shown on its own and never added in.
- Payback is shown as a budget: the most a one-off fix could cost and still pay back within 12 or 24 months. No prices.
- Every volume and minute figure is an example. Replace it with yours.
Sources, last checked 12 October 2026:
- Forrester Total Economic Impact method: 50% productivity recapture, 10 to 20% risk adjustment (this study was commissioned by Microsoft)
- APQC open standards benchmark: cycle time from requisition to PO, goods, median 2.0 days
- Carrying cost rule of thumb, 15 to 25% of stock value a year, citing ASCM guidance (MRPeasy, a software vendor, January 2025)
- Freightos (a freight marketplace) survey of the top 20 forwarders, 2018: manual quoting averaged 57 hours from enquiry to quote
- Vietnam employer social, health and unemployment insurance (21.5%) and union fee (2%), statutory rates
- Rodl and Partner, Vietnam statutory base salary and insurance cap from 1 July 2026
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, employer costs for employee compensation, June 2026
- GOV.UK, rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027
- GOV.UK, workplace pension contributions
- ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025
Your systems
Works with what you already run
The ERP stays. So do the spreadsheets people trust, the on-site server and the inbox. I connect what you already run instead of replacing it, and build on the data you already hold.
A new ERP is rarely step one. Clean data for bills of materials, routings and capacity usually is. When it is time to choose a system, I give you an independent view of buying versus building for that one process, before you sign anything. I do not sell or resell software.
Never automated
- Approving a purchase
- Pricing to buyers
- Choosing a supplier
- Compliance sign-off
How it starts
One process first, then the pattern repeats
- A short workshopYour department leads, AI in plain terms, everyone's repetitive work in one place, and one process chosen.
- A sit-inI sit with that department, time the steps and map what the process costs today.
- A fixed priceA recommendation, off the shelf or build, and a fixed price for the first build, or a recommendation not to build.
Then the pattern repeats. The first process proves the value and shows how the business really runs; the next ones reuse what was built, so the work spreads across departments instead of starting from zero each time.
Proof, honestly
What I have built so far
My published builds are in recruitment and travel, not manufacturing: a matching system that scores every application with its reasoning shown, and an intake system that turns messy enquiry email into clean records. The pattern is the one a factory office needs: messy inbound in, clean records out, a person checking.
Fair questions
Asked before, answered honestly
Do we need a new ERP first?
Usually not. The first win is most often in the hand-offs between the systems you already have: approvals, re-keying, chasing. Clean data for bills of materials, routings and capacity matters more than a new system. When a new system is the right answer, I will say so, and I do not sell or resell any.
Can this run on our own server?
Where it needs to, yes. We decide together what runs on your own server and what uses an outside service, and nothing is sent anywhere you have not agreed to.
Will this replace people?
No. It takes the re-typing and the chasing off them, so their time goes to judgement and follow-through. Training and handover are part of every build, and your team runs it after I leave.
Who checks the work?
Your people. The system flags, explains and drafts; a person approves anything that changes a record or goes to a buyer or a supplier.
Have you built for a furniture factory before?
Not yet, and I will not pretend otherwise. My published builds are in recruitment and travel. The pattern is the same: messy inbound turned into clean records, with a person checking, and the method starts by measuring your process before anything is priced.
We are not in Vietnam. Can you still help?
Yes. I am based in Ho Chi Minh City, so I can work on-site in Vietnam, and remotely with teams in the US and elsewhere.
Tell me which process eats the most hours. If AI will not help, I will say so.
Based in Ho Chi Minh City, so I can work on-site in Vietnam, and remotely with the US and everywhere else.