Product Configuratior Customer Case Studies

Technology Environment: BPCS

This leading pump manufacturer is the quality leader and is managing to stay cost-competitive through engineering innovation. It also has some models that ship within 48 hours of order receipt. Product Configurator provides the capability to achieve lower costs and increase speed-to-market.

The company is nearly 100% accurate and its order entry time has gone from 4-5 days to a half-hour. Also, 80-90% of its parts go through the process automatically.

Technology Environment: CA (PRMS)

When your market leadership is based on your willingness to customize to meet the customer's need, configuration is the key to success.

This user provides cable assemblies for automation systems and has cut order processing time from six days to about two hours average.

The company is very experienced with the Configurator’s special parts, concurrent engineering and engineering change management capabilities. They have also customized specialized functionality whereby on-the-fly Bill of Material rules are automatically validated to ensure that all critical component parts have been selected.

According to this manufacturer: "We had a mainframe system that was very manually-intensive and error-prone. We selected and implemented the Product Configurator and we've been happy ever since."

Technology Environment: ASI

How do you bring 12 acquired companies together under a single enterprise business system when they all have different part numbers, even for the same end item? A leader in quality containers accomplished this by using the Product Configurator to create accurate, consistent, multi-level Bills of Material and process routings for its products, and automatically update American Software's ERP System.

The company's inside sales reps now take only about 30 minutes to complete entry of an order. Prior to implementing CS-Enterprise, that process took approximately two weeks. Complete customer order cycle time has dropped from 6-8 weeks to 2-4 weeks.

Technology Environment: Glovia

Moving from three days to three minutes to prepare a configured product order resulted in major savings for this leading hinge manufacturer. Configurations from sales personnel are now 100% buildable and Product Configurator provides accurate and immediate prices and delivery dates.

This company has implemented the Configurator integrated to the Glovia ERP system. This tight integration was critical to the company, since most of its orders include multiple standard and configured products, all of which must be coordinated for shipment.

Technology Environment: Visibility / AutoCAD

How do you cut your lead time from 36 to 16 weeks on custom designed and very complex products? Through a combination of process streamlining and focused application software. This prominent manufacturer of high-quality elevator and escalator systems has ramped up Product Configurator applications to generate Bills of Material, as well as drawings of these complex configured products. The company is saving about $600,000 of engineering time per year through a combination of the Configurator and AutoCAD.

According to this company: "Configurator has become the heart and soul of our engineering process."

For elevators, which have 1,500-2,000 parts, Product Configurator identifies all mechanical, electrical and fixture components and assemblies. The order-through-engineering process that once took eight to 12 weeks is now down to two to three weeks through a combination of process streamlining and automation.

Technology Environment: BPCS / Pro-E

The largest pump company in the world and a leader in each of their markets, they have standardized on Product Configurator worldwide, integrated to BPCS and Pro-E.

Using our solution, they trimmed order processing time from over a week to a few hours. In addition, they have freed up engineering to develop new products, rather than spend time configuring orders and have achieved an 80% engineering bypass rate for all orders.

Technology Environment: SAP / Copics / Demand Solutions / SDRC / Legacy

Multiple-producing divisions of high-quality wood office furniture utilize Product Configurator to configure 500-4,000 configured sales order line items per day at each division. They also have interfaces to three order entry systems and two ERP systems. They have utilized the Configurator's Capable-To-Promise customer due date promising and critical path shop floor scheduling for over eight years.

Their business case to acquire the Configurator was simple: With an increasing number of product options, they were losing market share to competitors. Because configuring every order took so much manpower, they had limited the options on their product lines. Also, their existing ERP system was too slow and cumbersome to support lean manufacturing initiatives.

Technology Environment: Made2Manage / AutoCAD

This pump company is known for delivering excellent product lifecycle and economies. Product Configurator has been key to supporting its outstanding customer service by shortening the order-to-manufacturing launch time for its largest volume products.

According to a company spokesman: "Rather than a few days in engineering, it's now a few hours...which means customer shipments happen earlier. We have almost tripled our sales volume and resulting profits without additional personnel."

Customer service is particularly critical in this company's automotive business, where the OEMs have very tight delivery time windows. Configurator has provided the data necessary to accurately and promptly quote new business—and win new business.