An empirical production-planning & control framework for engineer-to-order companies

Our study focuses on companies operating according to an Engineer-To-Order (ETO) strategy, where each product has a distinctive degree of customization according to specific customer requirements. Due to the main features of ETO context (low level of repetitiveness and high responsiveness to customers' requirements changes), companies need different managerial paradigms and ICT tools compared to mass production companies. Duplicating methods implemented for repetitive production may not yield the same benefits for ETO. The main consequence of the lack of specific organizational and managerial approaches for ETO results in the incidence of rework required in projects, with consequent time-to-finish delays and increased costs. Through the 21 industrial case studies performed, we identified a compelling need for reviewing the general approaches to the planning, scheduling, and control tasks in ETO companies. This need led us to devise an ideal framework encompasses all the activities involved in the order fulfillment process referred to these critical processes. Therefore, starting from the maps of the ETO companies processes, we outlined a general reference model aiming at assisting company management in the review of their processes.