Engineer-to-Order
Engineer-to-order means craftsmanship where production is tailored for specific customer requirements. It means the entire research and development, design, and build is suited for certain specifications, and it differs from customer to customer. Although such productions offer a great deal of personalized content to the customers, it comes with reasonable operational costs, making the product quite expensive. So, the prime goal is to reduce operating costs which will reflect on the product's price. Incorporating lean customization into engineer-to-order addresses this issue, getting modular work processes.
Modularization
About 100 years ago, Henry Ford presented the first assembly line to the automotive industry. Since then, auto manufacturing has primarily been in a fixed and sequenced line, operated by pre-defined and rigid processes. Once an assembly line is defined for a specific model, it cannot be modified throughout the entire product's lifecycle and commands over the intra-logistical methods of the production and supply chain. The auto manufacturers had to incur huge costs if they wanted to release a modified model since it involved creating an entirely different assembly line. This issue is not limited to car manufacturing but also apparel, chemical, and pharma industries. To address an agile and flexible production process, the industry is using the concept of modularization.
Modularity essentially refers to the capability of a system to be reconfigured on a plug-n-play basis, thereby allowing it to respond to changes in customer requirements quickly and efficiently.
Audi is one such company that has created independent workstations, each assigned a particular production function. Unfinished cars move autonomously from one workstation to the other, with the help of driverless transport systems (DTS), where connected robots and a few humans assemble a particular part of the car. Suppose one DTS reaches a station that is already occupied. In that case, it is programmed to head to another available station, thereby removing the delays part of the conventional assembly line. This modular assembly also allows for changes to be made on the go.
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On the spot correction of any problem that may arise in the supply chain without stopping production completely.
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The advent of DTS means that human workers no longer must adapt to the assembly line's speed or move with the line.
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AI and deep learning techniques are equipping the connected systems to learn from past experiences and improvise as and where needed.
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Customizations and other changes can be made without incurring additional costs.
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Since most engineering involves pre-constructed modules, these can be incorporated into the production system with minimum costs. The journey from laboratory to production takes lesser time; thus, it becomes easier to market the product.
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Breaking down the whole product architecture into modules that can be arranged in different ways to meet customer requirements and finish the job.
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Setting up a set of rules that define the range of module arrangement and configuration of products. Manufacturers can use AI today to address this section.
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Providing customers with a user-friendly interface to select their preferred configurations from a portfolio of modules.