Ensphere supports Rixonway Kitchens on its Fast Track growth plans

Company

Founded in 1978, Rixonway Kitchens is one the UK’s leading manufacturers of quality, sustainable kitchens which not only meet but exceeds customer expectations.  Today the company based in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire employs over 450 staff and operates from a purpose built 177,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility. 

Rixonway typically manufacturers around 12,000 kitchen units in a range of modern
and traditional finishes. The kitchens are further complemented with an extensive range of co-ordinating sinks, worktops, handles and accessories. Products are available in a number of specifications in order to suit the individual requirements of each customer.

The company’s tailored - customer focused - service allows Rixonway to provide unrivalled support to all new and existing customers through the provision of a fully integrated support network.  Whilst service levels are championed, the entire manufacturing process is key to ensuring that Rixonway’s products are of the highest quality. This sustained effort in ensuring quality has seen Rixonway receive the highest accolade in the furniture industry; the FIRA Gold award, along with the manufacturing industry standard ISO 9001.

Rixonway is, however, equally conscious of the impact that its products have on the environment. In this vein, the company ensure that all raw materials used in the production of the company’s units and worktops are FSC accredited. Various environmental initiatives have helped towards the successful certification of ISO 14001.

Rixonway has experienced significant growth in recent years, more than doubling its turnover since 2006 as the result of a management buyout and subsequently achieving 36th position in the Sunday Times Top 100 Profit Fast Track Companies in 2010.  Other recent accolades include; Manufacturer of the Year and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Rixonway’s Chief Executive, Paul Rose.

Challenges

Rixonway operates a complex business process.  Whilst the main process is relatively simplistic; tender → design→ contractor call off → manufacture → warehouse →  delivery → invoice, the complexity lies in operating stock levels in a ‘Just in Time’ system and importantly for Rixonway maintaining an ultra-efficient business model. 
Rixonway had set itself ambitious future growth objectives.  These objectives would require them to continually push the boundaries of their IT and constantly seek to improve efficiencies across the entire business in order to achieve even greater competitive advantage. 

Rixonway’s IT Director, Andy Pickard explains:

“Sage Line 500 was providing us with an adequate solution, we had no major issues with it, essentially it did exactly what it said on the ‘tin’. The problem was that we needed to get more out of Line 500, in particular it didn’t have the furniture specific capabilities that we now needed.  We explored a variety of options but during our conversations with Wayne Nolan and his Ensphere team we realised that Line 500 had the potential to be tailored to suit our exact requirements.”

The Ensphere Solution

Ensphere had supported Rixonway for many years, having already successfully carried out a number of major Sage upgrades for them including a 36 user Sage Financials implementation. This inbuilt understanding of Rixonway, their business processes and changing needs enabled Ensphere to recommend a bespoke furniture solution that would use their existing Sage Line 500 as the core system. 

Key to the requirement was the need to introduce a complex bar coding solution.  Rixonway was now managing an extensive warehouse facility that stored all of the raw materials and supporting components that the business needed in order to manufacture its 12,000 units each week.  They needed to track every single item from the shelf through to final destination, as well as manage any returns and crucially to achieve a 98% trace on all deliveries.

Ensphere worked closely with Rixonway’s IT department to develop the bespoke furniture solution.  They also implemented a bar code scanning system but as with Sage Line 500, Ensphere also enhanced the core scanning solution by tailoring it extensively so that it would meet Rixonway’s exact requirements.

Real time stock level visibility was achieved along with full labour, materials and work in progress tracking and reporting.  With the bespoke Ensphere solutions, Rixonway now benefits from complete visibility and tracking of stock from raw material and components, through the manufacturing process and ultimately to  delivery.  Manufacturing components are automatically fed into the MRP system and assembled goods are successfully tracked from the warehouse to the trailer and final destination.

Ensphere

Andy Pickard explains why Ensphere;