Engineer To Order

Have you heard the term engineer to order and automatically pictured yourself piecing together an engineer based on your desires? While you are completely wrong, the term actually refers to the manufacturing mode involving collaboration with a customer on the engineering phase of the product lifecycle in order to arrive at a product design that meets the customer’s functional requirements.

While there are many in this space these days including IFS North America, a company touted as making enterprise resource planning (ERP) “as agile as your thinking,” Encompix ERP software from Consona (News - Alert) powers project scheduling and management capabilities for engineer to order environments that traditionally require very complex manufacturing in addition to the continuous evaluation of various projects, costs and schedules.

In certain scenarios, when companies are searching for the perfect engineer to order system to meet their individual requirements they may select the wrong one due to multiple factors including: there are too many ERP products on the market, they don’t have the amount of expertise needed to choose the ideal product, there are clear ETO requirements that are simply not included within ordinary ERP offerings, and most importantly they haven’t truly defined their goals and needs finely enough.

Luckily with the Encompix (News - Alert) ERP software, engineer to order (ETO) and project-based manufacturers will gain access to a highly intuitive enterprise solution that has been created from the ground up specifically to be utilized within these types of projects. According o the company’s website, “For these engineering-intensive companies, generic ERP software designed for repetitive manufacturing business models won’t do. Encompix fills the gap with specially-designed functionality for every aspect of the ETO manufacturing lifecycle, from concept to completion.”

 Some of the key differences between standard manufacturing or Make to stock (MTS (News - Alert)) style manufacturers and their engineer to order manufacturing (ETO) counterparts include:

 •MTS uses a price list while ETO supplies estimates and quotes

•MTS inventory is based on a party number while in comparison ETO inventory is based on a contract order

•MTS makes no or only a few engineering changes but ETO makes multiple engineering changes

In conclusion, if you want a sure fire way to wrap up your overall design and manufacturing process in as little time as possible, be sure to select an engineer to order specialist that knows exactly what you need for that to happen.

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