Quality Furniture Strengthens Lead Times and Costing Accuracy with Lectra’s Upholstery Solutions

• Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
• Functional Applications - Product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLM)

• Product Research & Development
• Quality Assurance

• Predictive Maintenance

• Software Design & Engineering Services
• System Integration
• Training

Having built a reputation for the fastest and most reliable lead times in the industry, Quality Furniture constantly seeks to pinpoint areas for additional time and cost savings. In particular, the company wanted to bring more products to market faster—both for designs based on client briefs as well as their own original ideas. Seeing the opportunity to cut time and costs from tasks like manual pattern making, drafting with pen and paper, estimating resource usage, and testing prototypes, Quality Furniture sought to implement a CAD solution. They immediately saw that Lectra could handle all their needs—something no other solution could.

Since its start in 1993, Quality Furniture (QFC) has evolved from being a small upholsterer serving a wide customer base, to the UK’s leading manufacturer of entry-level sofas with a focus on a limited number of large national retailers. In 18 years, the company’s turnover has gone from approximately £3 million to just under £25 million, with a track record in designing and supplying some of the UK’s best-selling sofas. QFC focuses on serving customers that operate a stock model—providing them with reliable, cost-effective sofas on an extremely short lead time of seven to ten days. QFC’s major customers include Argos, Homebase, Tesco, Next, Laura Ashley, and Sainsbury’s. The company operates from a 130,000ft2 factory in the East Midlands, employs 240 people, and currently produces approximately 4,000 sofas per week.

Having worked successfully together for over 15 years, Quality Furniture turned to Lectra to provide a solution that combines performance and responsiveness to guarantee the build quality of the finished product, significant material savings, and faster time-to-market. According to managing director Vernon Goldberg, “Lectra’s solution was exactly what we were looking for because it did all the surface and solid modeling and gave us the ability to integrate with our own ERP system,” he says. “We can spend more time designing products and less time prototyping. From the product development side, what we did in a week can now be done in a couple of days. We can spend our time adding value, getting rid of waste, and getting leaner—giving us the potential to grow the business significantly without any additional staff.” Lectra’s solution is now an integral part of Quality Furniture’s competitive strategy—solidifying their signature seven-to-ten-day lead time.

• Quality Furniture’s fast lead-time strategy works on two fronts. They engineer quality into the products’ design, and they use standardized build techniques to ensure quick, flawless assembly. With Lectra’s solution, it’s an intuitive process, giving them meticulous engineering for high degrees of repeatability in the factory.
• Forecasting is a critical element for Quality Furniture. And with long development cycles—including design, prototyping, selection, and production—it’s crucial to make accurate forecasting decisions early in the process to ensure the final product can be produced with quality, on budget, and within deadline.
• The company has also found another benefit: highlighting Lectra’s solution to their customers as a proof of industry leadership in terms of technology and professionalism. An added bonus is that they can use the solution to demonstrate a slick process to customers.

• In 18 years, the company’s turnover has gone from approximately £3 million to just under £25 million.
• The company operates from a 130,000ft2 factory in the East Midlands.
• Employs 240 people and currently produces approximately 4,000 sofas per week.