“I looked at a few other solutions but did not try them. Most of them all seem very labor-intensive and expensive. I think that Katana had a much lower barrier to entry.”
— Richie Duncan
KODAMA Founder
Company Profile
Company Profile
KODAMA is a US-based company building hanging loungers with a design inspired by natural geometry and dynamic motion. Richie Duncan, the founder of KODAMA, has been a designer and builder since the early days of wooden blocks and Legos. After spending some time traveling the world and learning more about architecture and sustainable design, Richard was captivated by the shape of the zome and returned to the US to use his knowledge to build KODAMA loungers.
Each KODAMA zome hangs safely from a single overhead point to create a smooth, gentle, and calming motion that soothes the vestibular system. KODAMA boasts its high-design, expert craftsmanship, and excellent customer service, and fully customizable zomes. The zomes can be placed anywhere from personal backyards and hotels to offices and therapy rooms.
Challenges
Challenges
KODAMA uses Quickbooks for their accounting, and the rest of the production was memorized. Therefore, they set out to look for something that would be a good addition to Quickbooks in terms of inventory management and production scheduling. Furthermore, having a large selection of customizable products meant they handle an endless amount of variants for each product. This required them to find a proper system to help track orders, materials, and finished goods.
The main solutions KODAMA needed was:
- Software to deal with inventory management;
- Production scheduling and floor-level management; and
- A solution that integrates with the existing accounting platform - Quickbooks.
Why Katana?
Why Katana?
When asked why Richie decided to go for Katana, his answer was quite simple, praising Katana’s simple interface and easy set-up.
“I looked at a few other solutions but did not try them. Most of them all seem very labor-intensive and expensive. I think that Katana had a much lower barrier to entry. It was still some work to get up and running, but I was able to gradually build my processes into Katana’s system over several months.”
How Katana Helped
How Katana Helped
In the furniture industry, a lot of money gets tied up in the inventory. Therefore, having great inventory control and planning is essential. KODAMA can now see their inventory levels in just a few clicks and keep their stock at optimal levels.
As the KODAMA loungers are highly customizable, Katana’s bill-of-materials allows them to easily plan and prioritize order, giving them a seamless connection between the inventory and shop-floor activities in real-time.
Since Katana came into KODAMA’s daily life 8 months ago, here is what they've experienced:
- Material inventory management efficiency has increased by close to 80% since ;
- Production planning has become around 60% more efficient; and
- On-time fulfillment rate has improved by 25%.
“In Katana, we can more effectively see and follow inventory levels, and have recipes and BOM for our manufactured products that let us follow the manufacturing status throughout the whole production cycle.”
With Katana, you can create your bill of materials and SKUs, so it can automatically allocate finished goods and raw materials to any open orders, meaning you'll never miss a deadline again. The perfect tool for anyone looking for more control and to grow their business.
