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In this increasingly competitive market, many manufacturing companies are seeking to address three key issues to increase customer satisfaction and gain a competitive edge:

To tailor products to customers’ needs, a manufacturer must possess the capability and flexibility to accept customized orders and configure products according to specific requirements.

To keep inventory as low as possible, use a postponement strategy to delay manufacturing or assembling products until customer orders are received.

To shorten delivery lead time, the ability to swiftly convert customers’ requirements into manufacturing requirements is crucial.

A highly market-oriented company focuses on meeting or exceeding customer expectations. In such a company all functions must contribute toward a winning strategy. Thus, operations must have a strategy that allows it to supply the needs of the marketplace and provide fast on-time delivery.

From the supplier’s perspective, delivery lead time is the time from placing an order to the delivery of the product. From the customer’s perspective, it can also include time for order preparation and transmittal. Customers want delivery lead time to be as short as possible, and manufacturing must design a corresponding strategy.

There are four basic strategies: engineer-to-order, make-to-order, assemble- to-order, and make-to-stock. These strategies can influence delivery lead time, customer involvement in the product design, and inventory state.

Engineer-to-order means that the customer’s specifications require unique engineering design or significant customization. Usually the customer is highly involved in the product design: Inventory is not purchased until needed for manufacturing. Delivery lead time is long because it includes not only purchase lead time, but design lead time as well.

Make-to-order means that the manufacturer does not start to make the product until a customer’s order is received. The final product is normally made from standard items but can include custom- designed components as well. Delivery lead time is reduced because there is little design time required and inventory is held as raw material.

Assemble-to-order means that the product is made from standard components that the manufacturer can inventory and assemble according to a customer order. Delivery lead time is reduced further because there is no design time needed and inventory is held ready for assembly. Customer involvement in the design of the product is limited to selecting the component part options needed.

Make-to-stock means that the supplier manufactures the goods and sells from finished goods inventory. Delivery lead time is shortest. The customer has little direct involvement in the product design.

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The relationship of the Variety/Volume matrix is between the volume and variety of products produced and the particular manufacturing strategy chosen to accomplish the production.

As you can see, if you adopt the make-to-order and assemble-to-order strategies, there can be many product varieties as well as large volumes. Ask three key questions for the strategies to be successful:

QAD Configurator can help you answer these questions.

QAD Configurator is a product configuration and guided selling tool. It allows make-to-order and assemble-to-order companies to quickly and efficiently create sales orders based on specific customer requirements, and to fulfill complex, customized products and services. It is an add-on module to QAD Enterprise Applications and provides flexible and powerful product configuration and computer-aided order entry capabilities.

QAD Configurator works for manufacturing companies who produce products that are highly configurable or are routinely customized to meet the unique needs of their customers. By seamlessly integrating into the order entry process, QAD Configurator ensures complete and valid product configuration during order entry. It instantaneously translates customers’ unique product requests into quotations, sales orders, bills of material, and routings.

QAD Configurator effectively bridges the information and knowledge gap between product engineering and sales. It allows sales personnel to access the most current product data, while engineering personnel maintains the product data. And sales personnel can enter orders with complex configurations based on specific requirements from customers.

QAD Configurator is embedded in the application area of the QAD .NET user interface. Thus it is consistent with the rest of the QAD Enterprise Applications in terms of look and feel and navigation.