ERP Systems and the ETO Manufacturing Market
Part Three: User Recommendations
P.J. Jakovljevic - May 5, 2004

What Happens When You Select the Wrong ERP System

One of the myriad of appalling consequences that result from fitting an engineer-to-order (ETO) environment with a repetitive-oriented ERP system, which does not have, in the very least, a product configurator facility with generic items (encapsulating options, variants, and constraints), generic bill of materials (BOM), generic routings, or pricing functionality, is that the sales order capturing clerk has to contact the engineering department for a product code or for the price or cost of a product, sometimes waiting days for a response. Needless to say the standard master data becomes bloated because each product variant has to have a separate stock item code, BOM, and routing as if it was a standard stock item and not a once-off made customized product (for example, a special color or gauge thickness). As a result, the ill-fated user company would have to literally close down operations so that the entire place can participate in a dreaded stock-taking exercise with an item master printout as thick as encyclopedia and with less than 10 percent of listed items expected to be really stocked. This is without considering the likelihood of identical products having a number of different item codes as different people created new codes unbeknownst to each other...