Establishing a maturity model for design automation in sales-delivery processes of ETO products

Short delivery times are considered a competitive advantage in the engineer-to-order (ETO) sector. Design-related tasks contribute to a substantial amount of delivery times and costs since ETO products have to be either fully developed or adapted to customer specifications within tendering or order fulfillment. Approaches aiming at a computerised automation of tasks related to the design process, often termed design automation or knowledge-based engineering, are generally regarded as an effective means to achieve lead time and cost reductions while maintaining, or even improving product quality. In this study we propose a maturity model as a framework for analyzing and improving such activities in ETO companies. We contribute to the literature in being the first to investigate design automation in the ETO sector from a maturity perspective. Beyond that, we extend the extant literature on design automation, which is of a highly technical nature, by providing a framework considering organizational and managerial aspects. The findings indicate that five different levels of maturity can be achieved across the dimensions strategies, processes, systems, and people. Empirical cases give insight into these different levels. Our investigation draws from extant literature and a comparative case study involving four companies over two years

from eto to mass customization a two horizon eto enabling process

During the past few years, many companies are playing in their respective market managing one batch of their commercial offer as mass customizer and another as a pure Engineer-to-Order (ETO) company. This newly created business model generates new needs and issues both in the internal organization approaches, and in the supporting IT systems. The competitive advantage of successful firms relies on the effective management of their purely customized orders, with the aim of including relevant knowledge and information in the standard space of action. Therefore, this study aims at conceptualizing this new business reality, presenting an innovative underlying scheme for the ETO enabling process in which the central focus is on the design phase. Furthermore, a set of success practices are represented, discriminated between long and short term horizons. In this context, both technological and organizational aspects have been explored. Lastly, applicability of the proposed framework has been empirically validated through case studies

Value creation in production: Reconsideration from interdisciplinary approaches

This paper presents reconsideration of value creation in production from various aspects of value viewpoints in several disciplines such as production engineering, social sciences, and human sciences. The focal point of investigations is value co-creation by the provision of products and services in and for society. In the past, some methods of social sciences and others proved to be useful in making production more efficient. At present, such methods must help to realise value creation. In fact, production must become more effective in response to human needs in social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Along with the theoretical apparatus, this paper presents some case studies indicating the importance of value creation in production, followed by future perspectives of value co-creation in production