In business with end customers, special requests have long been part of everyday life, whereas in manufacturing companies, quantities of more than 1000 workpieces were used for decades. For a long time, internal processes were not suitable for small series or single-item production. "Today, internal production and administration processes can be mapped in the company with the help of software at virtually no cost, regardless of the desired quantity," says Christian Biebl, Managing Director of Planat. The software company is used by numerous manufacturing companies with its ERP/PPS system FEPA. The approach is holistic and includes not only the software, but also a critical examination and optimization of processes relating to manufacturing, production planning and subsequent logistics and administration. Digital processes, end-to-end from order to delivery, are essential in order to fulfill the batch size 1 chain.
The IT report by the VDMA (German Engineering Federation) also confirms the need for more digitalization and batch size 1. For many companies in the manufacturing industry, web stores for B2B sales are therefore a future option in addition to digital spare parts catalogs. According to the VDMA's IT report, customer-configurable variants will be one of the top 10 areas of investment in German mechanical engineering in 2020. In 2018, the topic was still in 18th place. For seamless processing, individual parts lists and production orders must be generated based on the master data. The digital mapping of specifications is essential to reduce manual work, which is time-consuming and highly prone to errors.
