Slide 5 of 21
Notes:
Engineer-to-Order solutions are a natural extension to the recent trend in systems for complex products.
In business to consumer (B2C) businesses, products are typically made to stock and shipped to order.
Today, most computer manufacturers assemble their products to order and use automated configurators to guide consumers and/or sales force to configure the proper set of compatible parts to meet a customer’s needs. In simple products, it is enough that the configurators produce parts lists; predefined assembly instructions allow assemblers to assemble the product. Typical assemble-to-order configurators on the market today are supplied by Calico Commerce and by Trilogy Inc.
More complicated products require that assembly and installation instructions and drawings are created, even if all the parts are standard. Build-to-order systems that configure products and produce these engineered instructions are today supplied by Concentra (a subsidiary of Oracle) and Premisys (a subsidiary of J.D.Edwards).
When even a small fraction of the product has to be engineered and designed specifically for a single installation, we move into the engineer-to-order market. This is the market space where Design Power, Inc. is active.