From Steam to Streamlined: Sauna Maker Brings 45 Years of Craftsmanship into the Digital Age 

For UK-based sauna manufacturer Oceanic Saunas, upgrading the production system with new manufacturing software has brought tangible benefits to both sales, shop floor operations, visibility, and finances.

A family business with a passion for heat 

Since its inception in the 1970s, Oceanic Saunas has grown into one of the UK’s leading sauna and steam room manufacturers. From compact infrared cabins to bespoke Turkish steam rooms, the Wolverhampton-based company is renowned for designing and building high-quality wellness spaces for homes and commercial locations.

Director Sarah Jones, who joined the family business about two decades ago, has led the company through a major evolution in recent years. Oceanic Saunas used to sell a wide range of bathroom products, including baths, showers, and washroom accessories, in addition to their staple product, saunas. “I saw the market saturating and made the decision to focus purely on saunas and steam rooms. That’s what we’re truly good at and what customers know us for today,” says Sarah.

Oceanic Saunas has around 20 full-time staff at its Wolverhampton site and, with nearly half a century of experience, remains a proudly independent manufacturer, one determined to embrace modern manufacturing methods.

A system overhaul was in order 

The company’s internal systems had not kept pace with its product innovation, as can sometimes happen with long-standing businesses. “We’d been using Sage 50 forever,” Sarah explains. “But it’s basically an accounting program. It wasn’t giving us everything we needed from a sales and production point of view.”

As a result of the company’s dependence on inefficient productivity tools, the production process was littered with small inefficiencies – duplicate SKUs (stock keeping units), inconsistent materials, and non-existent shop floor visibility. “The whole SKU system was a mess,” Sarah says. “We had too many people creating them over the years. It needed a complete clean-up. And because we were expanding our sauna ranges, it seemed like the right time to make everything more efficient and shift systems.”

What began as a system cleanup soon evolved into a company-wide modernization project – a comprehensive realignment of product structures, workflows, and physical space. “And we wanted really good software to underpin it all. Something that would help us tidy up, track things properly, and make the business stronger for the future,” Sarah recalls.

From government programs to app marketplaces 

Sarah didn’t foresee that her search for manufacturing software would turn into a 12-month journey involving multiple partners and grant programs. She first contacted CW Growth Hub, a regional business support organization for SMEs. They put her in contact with the Manufacturing Technology  Centre (MTC), a center of excellence dedicated to advancing manufacturing technologies, which in  turn recommended Oceanic Saunas join the Made Smarter programme – a UK government-backed  initiative to help manufacturers accelerate their adoption of digital technologies. “They gave us  people who guided us through what to look out for and we had software demos using our live data.”

In conjunction with the support from Made Smarter, Sarah also started her own independent research. That’s when she came across SME-focused manufacturing software MRPeasy. Sarah tested the trial mode and was impressed, even checking how it looked on her phone to ensure usability for warehouse workers, who’d mostly be using it for reporting. “I loved it immediately. It was intuitive and had a brilliant interface. My logic was that if I find using it easy, my salespeople and the rest of the staff will too,” she says. 

She returned to MTC and told them she had found MRPeasy and liked it. As MTC couldn’t support it directly, they put Sarah in touch with independent manufacturing and ERP consultancy, Smart Manufacture, an authorized implementation partner of MRPeasy, who engaged directly to support the set up and implementation of the system.

The consultant came on-site and mapped out the production setup, talked to all the departments,  and gained an in-depth understanding of how the business operated and concluded that MRPeasy was an appropriate fit for the company’s requirements. 

Implementation amid major changes 

The implementation of MRPeasy commenced in late 2022, right in the middle of three major parallel projects: a complete product range redesign, a new Magento 2 e-commerce website, and, for Sarah personally, having two children. “It was a busy period,” she laughs. “But everything had to feed into one another to make it all work.”

The transition was not without its challenges. Because the company was shifting on many lanes simultaneously, the implementation took around a year from the first steps to going live. 

Despite some initial resistance, Oceanic Saunas’ internal reaction to the system overhaul soon turned positive. “People get used to doing things their own way. Many of our staff were spreadsheet-heavy and kept printing everything. We really had to encourage them to stop,” Sarah explains. “But today, MRPeasy is well-adapted to. Some of my staff actually love the new system and almost compete to solve issues when anything comes up!” 

Benefit: A clearer view of the business 

Since going live, MRPeasy has become central to how Oceanic Saunas runs its operations. It provides Sarah with a full top-down view of how the company is functioning. “I can log in anywhere in the world and see how the business is doing — how many sales we’ve had today, what’s in production, what’s coming in, everything,” Sarah says. She uses CRM filters to monitor quotation conversion rates and track daily sales performance. Something that was previously difficult to see. “It’s all there at a glance now.”

Speaking about MRPeasy’s responsiveness and capacity to meet Oceanic Saunas’ requirements within and after implementation, Sarah notes, “Generally, there’s always been a solution with MRPeasy. Their support team is really great, and the ticket system works very well. We’ve not had issues that didn’t get resolved in a relatively short time.”

Production efficiency rising like the heat 

Aside from the increased visibility, accurate costing has been another significant improvement for Oceanic Saunas. “One of our major issues with Sage was that we couldn’t cost things in sufficient detail. With MRPeasy, we can assign overheads and have the system automatically calculate product cost based on SKU configurations. I’m much more confident with it now, plus, I can do it very  quickly.”

Sarah also particularly appreciates MRPeasy’s BOM (Bill of Materials) with Parameters feature, which allows flexible product configurations. “We have product variations — different materials, finishes,  details, and so on. It’s so easy to choose the variation and have MRPeasy automatically create the related orders, calculate costs and lead times, and even generate purchase orders for missing items.  It takes loads of work off the team”.

Advice from Director: Do the homework before overhauling systems 

For other companies considering manufacturing ERP software, Sarah offers a word of advice: “Don’t rush in. I would read everything I can on MRP and ERP systems to home in on my requirements,” she says. “These systems are huge, and there’s much to look out for. For us, it was about how the  software handles manufacturing orders, how data moves to the shop floor, and how operators access  instructions.”

She concludes with the clarity of someone who’s done the hard work: “Going through the process of learning what I needed the software to do was essential. While it took a while, it gave me the confidence to recognise good software when I saw it. MRPeasy is just nice to use, and everything you  need, from CRM to production planning, is there. That sold it to me. We’ve definitely found new efficiencies with it,” she concludes. “MRPeasy supports the kind of manufacturing discipline we were  aiming for and gives us the structure to adapt to change.”

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