Configure to Order

The ability to make and deliver products customised to specific customer needs offers a powerful competitive edge. But it takes comprehensive functionality to handle the intricate material flow of parts that can be combined into perhaps millions of combinations. IFS/Configure to Order (IFS/CTO) provides this functionality. It offers a total solution that covers all related front and back office processes, from order taking through material management and manufacturing to shipping.

Reduce product lead time and cost

The purpose of IFS/CTO is to help you manage the complexity of selling and manufacturing configurable parts. By enforcing predefined engineering rules as part of the sales process, IFS Applications ensures that a valid product configuration can immediately be released to manufacturing. This eliminates the need to re-engineer the product each time an order is taken, thus reducing product delivery lead time and cost.

Make order entry more reliable

A key aspect of the solution is that, instead of using a part number for each unique combination, you only need to maintain a configurable base part. For each base part, you then establish characteristics (e.g. colour) and option values (e.g. red and blue), which together describe all allowable configurations. Once you select characteristics and option values for a base part, it becomes a configured product. Pricing the configured product is easy since this is automatically done using the characteristics, options, and quantities selected. And because IFS/CTO is integrated with IFS/Constraint Based Scheduling, you can immediately give your customer an accurate promise date for delivery, based on material and capacity constraints.

Reduce the number of product structures and routings

Another key aspect of IFS/CTO is the use of user-defined manufacturing rules, which determine the correct process for producing the desired configuration. What this means is that product structures and routings are established based on the selected characteristics, option values, and quantities. This makes your manufacturing process transparent, flexible, and reliable. And it keeps your product structures and routings to a minimum.

Streamline your order fulfillment process

The integration of IFS/CTO with other IFS Applications modules makes your job even easier. As soon as a customer order line for a configured product is released, IFS/Make to Order and IFS/Assemble to Order automatically create supply orders. Other integrated modules, such as IFS/Purchasing and IFS/Shop Order, then help you process these orders. Once the end product is completed, it is automatically issued back to the customer order.