Furniture manufacturer
Updating a Shop Floor's Antiquated Access Apps
A furniture manufacturer relied on MS Access for key shop floor operations. It worked great until it didn't.
The problem
Over two decades, a DIY IT team built dozens of MS Access applications to support critical business functions such as Product Engineering, Production Scheduling, and Assembly. When that team moved on, operations were left with a support nightmare, unable to even upgrade a computer without risking the loss of access to essential processes.
Developing a plan
With more than 30 MS Access applications to upgrade, we followed a structured prioritization process. Unnecessary applications were eliminated, essential functionality was migrated into the ERP system (Infor SyteLine), and custom solutions were rebuilt on modern platforms such as Azure with Blazor, while BarTender was implemented for label printing.
Going to the gemba
The Lean principle of “going to the gemba” was essential: spending time on the shop floor, observing work firsthand, and respectfully asking why things were done a certain way. This approach helped us build trust with users and design solutions that were intuitive and required far less tribal knowledge to operate.
Unlocking improvement ideas
As we gained the trust of the production team, many improvement ideas were shared and implemented, making the process better than we found it.
