Product Configurators for the Modern Machine Shop
As a top ERP system, Cetec is proud to offer a wide array of customization options across the board. We are always happy to help our customers explore the most efficient way of meeting their specific goals and needs.
For example, we had a customer ask: We are a custom job shop. Does Cetec have a product configurator?
Let’s first clarify terminology. YES, Cetec ERP offers custom configurations of parts and jobs natively within quoting and work order areas of the system.
However, there are some software systems termed “product configurator” that are extraordinarily robust and come with a sophisticated set of “rules” and triggers designed to dummy-proof the process of building out the engineering requirements of a job, so that an inside sales person could take full responsibility for setting these requirements instead of having to involve an engineer.
To pull this off, it effectively requires a full-time position merely to maintain these constantly changing triggers and rulesets within the Product Configurator. This type of software is most often far more robustness than is needed by an SMB custom job shop.
Instead, Cetec ERP provides the ability to create custom configurations of the same top-level part number (or top-level part revision) and save those configurations for potential future repeat builds or rev changes, without having to create a new top-level part number every time.
This is done via use of the BOMQuoting tool and possibly clever use of “cloning” historical BOMQuotes; additionally, we recommend turning ON the “Update Order-Specific BOM ONLY” configuration setting.
Finally, use of APIs or Excel Macros may help automate your existing product configuration process, i.e. you can format any custom spreadsheet-based rulesets your sales and engineering departments use to define BOM or material makeup requirements, and then import the results to the BOMQuoteWorksheet (which ultimately becomes the “job”) in Cetec ERP.
To summarize: the term “product configurator” can refer to an enormous software system that Cetec ERP does not support, but that is likely not the road you, as a custom job shop, want to go down in the first place.
Instead, Cetec ERP offers integrated tools to help you automate the problem you do have, which is a quick way to get jobs quoted, related BOMs imported, and work orders entered for custom jobs, without your top-level part numbering scheme to grow indefinitely.