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SO BOM or Variant Configuration or Other for Technical Sale

Former Member
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Dear Community,

I would like to ask you and advice on this.

In a Plastic Packaging Industry with lots of different products but very similar at the same time, production is triggered after the customer order.

To me it sounds very logical to use Variant Configuration scenario to specify product details which define its components and operations. Nevertheless the Sales People are don't have the enough knowledge to define completely the product and need a Technical Area to define key information to complete the product. before sending sales order (or quotation) to customer.

Which scenario would you use ? And most important: how would you use it to integrate the customer requirement information with technical data from experts?

Thank you in advance,

Best Regards,

Sebastián Ligueros

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

madlercm
Active Contributor
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Hi Sebastian,

There are some questions to ask; like do you configure the product specifically for a customer, for a customer order, or it is just a standard product that you start manufacturing only after receiving the customer order?

Basically the question is do you have a situation of PRE-ENGINEERING or POST-ENGINEERING? VC belongs to the first, meaning that all the options and features are defined in advance, you only choose them for a specific customer order. In your kind of business this may not be the situation; for example the customer wants a certain kind of design, graphics, print, etc., that is entirely new and needs first to be "engineered" by the technical people, defined in the system as a new product (material master, BOM, etc,) before you can actualy create a sales order for.

If this is the case I would not go for VC.

Regards,

Mario

Former Member
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Hi Mario and the rest of community, I wish you a Happy New Year!

Answering the questions: The product is engineered specifically for the customer and is possibly (not always) subject to change in every sales order.

The first requirement from customer goes to sales department. If the product is new there is lot of joint woirk with technical area to develop the particular product and then send the quotation to the customer when most of the processes and components are defined. Product can be further specified in the sales order. If the product has been already sold in the past, sales department send quotation/sales order taking as reference a previous one maybe changing one or two elements like graphic design.

In this interaction between the sales department requirement and technical area for product development at "preparation for quotation level" and then for sales order I would like to know in your opinion which would be the best scenario.

Thank you,

Sebastián Ligueros

madlercm
Active Contributor
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Hi Sebastian,

So, as I said before, it is mostly post engineering (for new customer requirements), so VC is out of the question.

In this case we are left with engineer-to-order scenarios. In large products, like ships or aircraft this is best dealt with using PS in addition to PP, but in your case, I think that you just need a good product design process, that will take you from customer requirements to a new set of product and production master data. Then you use this in the sales and production process.

Regards,

Mario

Former Member
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Thank you for the answer. Just one doubt. Do you have any link to a demo scenario on IDES or similar to test the process??

best regards,

Sebastián Ligueros

madlercm
Active Contributor
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Hi Sebastian,

Actually this is not one process, but more like two.

You need a process to manage the creation/change of the set of master data for a new customer requirement. It can be done in more then one way, the best (in a large organization) would be using ECM and WF. This process will end with the creation of the customer quotation/order based on this set.

Second you need to design the planning/production process. Some decisions like MTS, MTO, or Assemble-to-Order, do you do some advanced procurement or not. Pretty straightforward.

Regards,

Mario

Former Member
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Hi Sebastian,

As per the above list of threads you need to have a right decession for implementing the scenariao's by following with MTS & MTO process's.Pls find the below small explanation on this:

SAP's MTO (Make to Order) and MTS (Make to Stock) concepts fit within their overall approach to ERP and manufacturing, in which they provide different approaches for different industries and business models. MTO and MTS are two approaches that address different types of models. SAP is integrating MTO and MTS within the overall planning, execution, forecast, and logistics processes as well as providing linkage to the engineering and design functions. This enables companies to be more flexible and adaptable in their overall business.

MTO and MTS are primarily ERP functions. While they can be performed within that domain, they are impacted by engineering changes to the products to be made to order and made to stock. The normal integration of PLM with ERP that includes change management should support the MTO/MTS requirements.

Regards

Yepuri

Former Member
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Dear Mario,

I agree with totally with your post.

I spent the morning reading a bit more about Variant Configuration and there is a scenario called "Order Bom VC" where the initial part of configuration is done by sales department then the technical area completes in CU51 the rest of configuration saving the Order Bom (No immediate BOM explosion when creating sales order). In PLM146 they also suggest (as you did) to implement WF to integrate sales & engineering. Do you think this scenario might work for this industry?

Thank you,

SL

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