Product configuration
Within the product configuration (see also product configurator) specific customer requests are important, in order that the sales department can configure a complex customized product configuration in collaboration with the customer. The product configuration enables offering complex products with many variants within short time. More and more successful enterprises with complex products use the supporting software to generate quotations .
The result of a product configuration is a list of all product components, which is completely checked for plausibility. Good configuration solutions can display products in complex tree structures. The product structure is the basis for generating a detailed, verified quotation or quotation information in the form of bills of material and process plans.
There are further aspects for using the product configuration, such as the consideration of expertise from the development department without time-consuming requests. This ensures meeting frame conditions, such as the buildability.
According to a survey of the Aberdeen Group in 2008, the best enterprises can show the following results due to using software to configure their product:
- Users of integrated product configurators could increase their product margins up to 80%
- Costs due to ordering errors were around 31,400 USD, with the industrial average being around 823,900 USD
- The best enterprises offer an average of 3.5 times more options in the product configuration than the market average
- There are 20% more enterprises than in the industry average that can precise calculate the costs already during the quote generation
