Merchants / Lie-Nielsen Toolworks
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Lie-Nielsen's ERP Empowers their Team to Focus on their Craft

Key Results

39 years
Company age
Founded by Thomas Lie-Nielsen
100 employees
Team size
Manufacturing premium hand tools
Warren, Maine
Location
Traditional American manufacturing

Products Used

  • ✓ Manufacturing Management
  • ✓ Inventory Management
  • ✓ Order Management

Fulfil's ERP enables us to focus on what we do best—crafting exceptional tools—while the system handles the operational complexity.

Lie-Nielsen Team
Operations
Lie-Nielsen Toolworks

Overview

Lie-Nielsen is a manufacturer of working hand tools based in Warren, Maine. Founded 39 years ago by Thomas Lie-Nielsen, who followed his boat-builder father's footsteps into craftsmanship, the company has grown from producing a single tool to becoming a global distributor of fine woodworking tools. Today, the company employs 100 people and maintains worldwide distribution through both retail and wholesale channels.

Challenge

Six years ago, Lie-Nielsen faced the complex challenge of managing their growing business operations. They needed a comprehensive software solution that could handle multiple aspects of their business, including production management, inventory tracking, purchasing processes, production flow, sales order tracking, customer service, and shipping. As a manufacturer with both production and distribution needs, they required a system that could "wrap around all the needs of the business."

Solution

Lie-Nielsen implemented Fulfil as their comprehensive business management platform.

The system provides:

  • Production management capabilities that enable orderly shop operations
  • Inventory tracking functionality
  • Purchase order management
  • Sales order tracking
  • Customer service support
  • Shipping management tools
  • Financial management features including journal entry generation
  • Custom API integration for production order creation and bill of materials management

The company has also developed custom tools and reports within the system, including financial templates for faster journal entries and specialized production tracking capabilities.

Results

The implementation of Fulfil has delivered significant improvements across multiple areas of the business. The shipping department efficiently manages picking, packing, and receiving operations through the platform, leveraging seamless carrier integrations such as Fulfil's Shippo integration to drive efficiencies and optimize fulfillment costs. Custom reports provide management with a comprehensive view of operations, enabling them to track movement of parts and forecast inventory availability for customers.

The financial team has benefited from robust financial integrations such as Stripe and Authorize.Net, and streamlined processes, particularly in managing day-to-day operations such as cash and check deposits, expense tracking, and journal entry generation. The system has enabled better workflow tracking and data capture across all operations.

The production team has leveraged the API capabilities to automate various processes, including production order creation and bill of materials management. This automation has contributed to faster movement of parts through the shop and improved forecasting capabilities for customer orders.

What's Next

Lie-Nielsen continues to explore ways to leverage Fulfil's capabilities to enhance operational efficiency. The company's focus is on further automating processes to allow team members to concentrate on their core competencies. Their goal is to use the system to free up more time for strategic activities while maintaining the high quality of their traditional toolmaking craft. The platform's ability to support both manufacturing and distribution operations positions Lie-Nielsen well for continued growth and efficiency improvements.

Originally published in 2022. Lie-Nielsen Toolworks continues to run on Fulfil today.

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View video transcript
Well, I make hand tools, woodworking hand tools, and I've been doing it for 39 years here in Warren, Maine. My father was a boat builder locally. I got interested in tools, worked for a hand tool company in New York for a few years after college. I came back to Maine and I started making one tool, and one thing led to another. Now we have 100 employees and worldwide distribution, both retail and wholesale. Six years ago, we were in great need of a software package that could wrap around all the needs of the business. One of the things that first brought us to Fulfil was the ability to run the production of the shop through the system in an orderly way. I started at Lie-Nielsen Toolworks about seven or eight years ago down in shipping. I did that for a little bit and then decided I wanted to try something new. I started doing a little bit of coding. I asked Tom if I could try to branch out, maybe do some IT, and he said sure. I started learning how to code two years ago with no experience at all. There's some things that I can have the API do for me: pick a part, pick the BOM for that, how many you're going to do, and then create the production order from scratch. It allows you to work through all the different work orders. In addition to inventory tracking, we need the ability to manage our purchasing process and our production flow process, tracking sales orders and providing customer service, shipping the tools out to customers all across the world. I'm Elizabeth Leino, the financial controller here for Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. Generating journal entries through Fulfil, we have some handy tools that were put together for us to help create those journal entries a little bit faster. That includes things like basic templates where we just have to plug in the numbers. It tells us what numbers it wants from where, and from there it generates the journal entries and we can post those once we check that they're correct. I mainly do the financial day-to-day stuff for the business, everything from depositing cash and checks to double-checking the expenses. As shipping manager, I have a great team with me. We use Fulfil to pick and pack the orders. Ranna uses Fulfil to receive when we get shipments in, truck shipments. I've been able to create reports to show Tom pretty much a bird's eye view of where things are, where they're moving. In those instances, we can see how much better people are doing, how much faster parts are moving through the shop. So then we can actually forecast when we're going to have things in stock for our customers. We're able to keep good track of inventory and workflow, as well as capture other sorts of data that we need through Fulfil. The more that Fulfil can support me to free me up, the better I like it. That allows me to do what I'm good at.

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