Outcome:
Dramatic Cost Savings/Competitive Advantage
A configurator—properly implemented—can result in
dramatic
cost savings for a company and
become a tremendous source of competitive advantage if the company
embraces the following 10 principles:
1. 21st
century manufacturers can’t ignore the
opportunity
presented by configurators and mass customization.
2. A
configurator project must be viewed as the mission-critical
technology in driving a new, transformative,
enterprise-wide business
strategy: mass customization—also known as
build-to-order, assemble-to-order, configure-to-order, etc.
3. A
configurator project must be approached
holistically across the entire
enterprise—configurator projects fail when they are approached as a
departmental initiative within a silo.
4. A
configurator must be integrated with your
ERP system.
5. The
configurator software is only one of the critical ingredients in a
successful project—in the bigger scheme of things, the configurator
merely provides the user interface and data repository required for
configuring products.
6. It
is vital that the appropriate
configurator technology be
deployed—inappropriate configurator technology can compromise the
initiative before you even get out of the starting blocks.
7. If
your company is migrating from an “engineer-to-order” or “mass
production” business paradigm, you’ll need to adopt a
customer-driven strategy for
developing and aligning your features and options.
8. A configurator
project represents a commitment to doing business differently—it must be lead from the highest levels in the
company.
9. A
configurator project won’t happen overnight.
10. It
is best to seek assistance from
mass-customization-expert
to act as a
guide to take your organization through this transformation—properly
implementing a configurator is not like any other project an
enterprise has ever undertaken.
