Scoping a Product Configuration Project for Engineer-to-Order Companies

Abstract

When implementing a product configuration system in a company making complex and highly engi-neered products,many decisions need to be made in the early phases of the project. This article pre-sents a framework for supporting the initial scoping process and discusses experiences from applyingthe framework in an engineering company. The framework covers a number of topics, such asidenti-fyingthe users of the configuration system, prioritizing the userrequirements, defining the inputand outputand considering the overall functionality of the configuration system. Furthermore,the scoping process considers the availability of product knowledge to model into the configuration system, the level ofdetail and which particular product parts and aspects to include in the system.

Article history: Received (12.07.2014); Revised (02.11.2014); Accepted (02.12.2014)