Controlling Customer Orders in the ETO/VUCA Contexts

Part 2: Operations Management in Engineer-to-Order ManufacturingInternational audienceUnder hyper-competition customers expect to accept last-minute changes in their orders. In such circumstances ETO manufacturing exhibits the VUCA specificity and suffers from many issues like delays, excessive costs, low quality etc. This paper examines operative controlling as a mean to facilitate discovery and response to the changes and disturbances. The approach derives from the phenomenological research and the reflection on theory and practice. The solution uses an integrated model that represents all workflows subject to changeable contexts and is based on three pillars: (i) run-time data extraction; (ii) integrated representation of workflows; (iii) providing current information to shareholders. The concept was validated by prototyping and a use-case

Customizations vs. Platforms – A Conceptual Approach to COSI

Part 2: Operations Management in Engineer-to-Order ManufacturingInternational audienceIn recent years, many manufacturers have experienced an increased demand for customized products and services, which requires the manufacturer to simultaneously offer both standardized and customized products. Consequently, several manufacturing strategies must be efficiently employed. These companies do not express the same prerequisites as ‘pure’ ETO companies since they need to be able to differentiate customized orders from standard orders, but also be able to differentiate between the manufacturing dimension and the engineering dimension of customization. Whereas standard orders can be processed with a platform approach, the customized orders contain specific requirements and information represented by ‘customer-order specific information’ (COSI). This paper defines and presents competitive scenarios where platform constraints are combined with COSI for efficient customizations. Implications for the approach and a path forward is discussed