Introduction
Teknion accelerates product launches and halves production time with Insight
Teknion, a global leader in office furniture design and manufacturing, faced a major challenge when launching a highly configurable product line—District. To bring this complex line to market quickly, Teknion selected Insight as its engineering and production management platform.
Within just six months, Teknion moved from concept to full-scale production, integrating multidimensional configurations, multiple materials, and advanced order processing.
Today, Insight continues to power their custom manufacturing operations across multiple facilities, reducing production time and improving operational efficiency.
The Challenge
Complex product configurations require seamless integration
Teknion offers made-to-order office furniture, allowing customers to select from standardized catalogs, modify existing designs, or create fully customized solutions. Managing these variations efficiently, from engineering to production, required a more agile system.
Time-consuming, manual processes slow down product launches
Initially, Teknion relied on a 2D bill of materials system that required manual intervention at multiple stages. Launching a new product line with complex configurations and multiple finish options posed a significant challenge.
Manufacturing inefficiencies create bottlenecks
With multiple facilities and diverse production methods, Teknion needed a system to standardize workflows, track inventory in real time, and optimize scheduling without human intervention.
“The big changes we've seen, our overall production time through the facility has been cut more than half. Our lead times have been reduced by two or three weeks.
“Over this year, the amount of whip on the floor has drastically been reduced, so less parts on the floor, a lot less confusion, a lot faster going through the plan. So we've seen some serious tangible benefits from switching over to Insight.”
Daniel Iacovetta, Plant Manager, Teknion
The Solution
The Results
Faster time-to-market for new product lines
By leveraging Insight’s advanced engineering capabilities, Teknion launched District in half the time of previous product rollouts—going from design to full-scale production in just six months.
Reduced lead times and increased efficiency
With centralized data and automated workflows, Teknion cut overall production time by more than 50% and reduced work-in-progress inventory, leading to faster throughput.
Optimized engineering resources
By standardizing processes with Insight, Teknion reduced engineering workload by 70%, allowing teams to focus on innovation rather than manual data processing.
“Most of our orders actually flow through Insight. They flow through the front office effortlessly. So there is no human intervention from the day we are receiving the orders and all the way to the scheduling. With the help of Insight, by standardizing our processes, we were able to reduce the engineering workforce by 70% and we were able to use these resources on the other side of our businesses.”
Jey Ruk, IT Team Manager, Teknion
