From Vision to Reality, The Hands OFF Configure to Order Experience

MISCHA VAN BRANDWIJK: So welcome, everybody, to this session, "From Vision to Reality, The Hands OFF Configure to Order Experience." But before we really kick off, let's introduce ourselves. My name is Mischa van Brandwijk. I'm working in the role of strategic management consultant at Cadac Group.

With 30 plus years of experience in manufacturing and the construction industry, I'm helping customers with their digital transition and implementing an Engineer to Order to Configure to Order strategy. I'm a C-level sparring partner, give awareness on product thinking and configuration management.

Who is Cadac? Cadac is an Autodesk Platinum and Microsoft Gold partner, with headquarters in the Netherlands, with several offices around Europe, with 250 experts. Cadac has over 35 years of experience in optimizing customer processes that come into contact with digital design and product information.

And in those years, we have developed thousands of solutions that enable companies like you to design, build, and operate even more efficiently. So Pim, your turn.

PIM SAARLOOS: Thank you, Mischa. My name is Pim Saarloos. I work as a product owner at Cadac Group, where I'm working for almost 25 years. And in my role as a product owner, I'm responsible for the manufacturing software of Cadac Group, which mainly involves extensions on top of Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Vault.

MISCHA VAN BRANDWIJK: OK, thanks, Pim. So let's talk about the session objectives. We would like to help you understand the industry challenges and how to beat them with a Configure to Order strategy, and understand that the core of a digital Configure to Order transformation is the establishment of a Configure to Order product platform, and understand the software architecture necessary for a Configure to Order process within the manufacturing and construction industry.

We want to point out our sessions from the last two years around the topic of Configure to Order. Every year, we try to point out Configure to Order from a different angle. I think it's great to visit these sessions on the AU website. But let's dive in and talk about some industry challenges we see day in and day out with our customers.

With all the developments worldwide, politically, economically, new technology, which is brought into the markets like AI, it's not easy to stay ahead on your competition and stay as efficient as can be as a company. In current times, you see a number of general challenges that many companies struggle with. Finding the right balance between product leadership, customer intimacy, and operational excellence is not easy.

Let's talk about some more specific challenges for the manufacturing industry-- application customization causing unneeded downtime, lead time, and errors, troubleshooting, one person armies and external dependencies, lots of data, double and manual workloads, no reuse of data, long lead times in sales and engineering processes, or a few uncommon challenges in the construction industry-- globally, earnings before interest and tax on construction activities is just 5.5%

So even the smallest mistake can make or break the project. And projects are becoming increasingly more complex, yet the schedules keep shrinking. And 80% of the construction companies cannot find the workers they need. And teams are becoming more and more distributed, with stakeholders split between various offices and the field.

We believe adopting a Configure to Order strategy in your company will help you overcome these industry challenges. So let's take a deeper dive in what we mean with Configure to Order. So when we take a look at our customer processes, we recognize, in general, three types of primary business processes.

We identify these processes as Configure to Order, Engineer to Order, and Design to Order. There are two main differences that separates these three types of processes in how they can be recognized. The first difference is about the moment in time when the required product data is being created.

For Configure to Order, the product data is already prepared and available upfront in the process. For Engineer to Order, some adjustments or small new designs are created after the order is received. And for Design to Order, more development cycles are required, so the actual useful data is being created at a later stage in the process.

The second difference is about the amount of people that are involved in these processes. For Configure to Order processes, very little people can be involved since the product data creation can be automated. It goes directly from sales to the product production department.

Engineer to Order has mostly sales engineering and engineering involved to get clarification on requirements and specifications. And with Design to Order processes, new functionality can be designed, which involves the R&D department and additional support required from all other departments to come to the new functional product.

At this slide, we see two main processes, often defined as Engineer to Order and Design to Order. Both processes begin with a customer and a salesperson getting clarity on and an agreement on the commercial and technical requirements. Once there is an order, the engineer starts by designing the product. And once new functionality is required, R&D people join the processes.

When the product is released, work preparation and purchasing can start with calculating and purchasing the components. If all the required components are produced and being delivered, and the assembly process can start. And after testing the product, it can be commissioned and installed at the customers' site.

Maintenance is being transferred to the service organization. Within these processes, people speak about their products referring as one of a kind products, specials, or customer-specific solutions. In the bottom, we see how the processes are being experienced by the people within the process.

Due to all kinds of missing information and irregularities within the specification process, a lot of communication and rework needs to be done to be able to deliver a functional product. It appears that every time these processes are being executed, they are being experienced for the very first time.

So to have a better understanding, let's take a look at some very first time experiences. In the Netherlands everybody is used to riding a bike. We have about 70 million people and 22 million bicycles. So to be able to survive on a bike in Dutch traffic, we need to learn to ride a bike at a very early age.

So how was it like riding a bike for the very first time? I will share a personal experience. For me, it didn't work out that well. As well as driving a car for the very first time, the first time didn't go so well either.

So try to imagine what happens if we perform a cycling activity for the thousandth time. We have developed and prepared our equipment. We know where to go, and we know when to finish. We are able to improve every time we perform the activity. It goes a lot better. So the keyword that we are looking for is repetition. If we are able to create repetition within our product and processes, we are able to automate them.

So let's take a look at how Configure to Order can help you out. It means a lot for the processes and people in your organization. So let's show some of the language you will have to learn when stepping into the CTO world. A lot of new words will be introduced in the organization.

And afterwards, everybody looks a bit like this because those are a lot of difficult words when you see some of them for the very first time. So in order to establish a common language, we clarify at least the highlighted words. And for this clarification, we use examples of the most modular product ever that everybody knows and where we all grew up with. Yes, indeed, it's LEGO.

Imagine the LEGO car on the right of the slide is one of the specific products from your customers. For a manufacturing company, this product could be a machine. And for a construction company, the product can be a house. Every product consists of some typical components. These collections of components we call modules.

In general, we see that a module is a generic collection. It has no physical representation or identification. On the screen, we see five modules, front module, an engine module, a chassis module in the center, a body module, and an access module on the right side.

When we zoom in on the front module, we can imagine this module comes in different representations. Within the highlighted circle, we have a front of a car executed with a radiator. We call this a variant of the front module. Next to the radiator variant, we have also a variant without the radiator. This is the second variant highlighted in the circle.

So horizontally, we speak about modules. These are generic. And vertically, we speak about variants. These are specific. And in the case of variants, specifications are known. Costs involved are known. We know the interaction with other variants, and we are able to define their interfacing.

As you can see, there's one exception over there. The chassis located in the center of the slide, there is only one variant of this module. So this means that every car uses the same execution of the chassis. And this makes a lot of people happy.

OK, to create a product, we need a certain set of interfacing variants, which can be combined. The product in the yellow circle on the right, we call a configuration. So if you want to create a different product, we use a different set of variants to create a different configuration.

So the collection of all these variants, we call these a product platform. And it's important that the content of the product platform matches the market needs for a certain period of time. This is where product management begins.

In this example, the LEGO product platform consists of 11 variants. This is the sum of variants. Instead of the sum, we can now multiply the variants. And this gives us 36 unique product configurations.

So with 11 variants, we can create 36 configurations. And we maintain the specifications and documentations only of these 11 variants instead of 36 end products. So that's a huge difference in terms of workload for the organization. This picture shows how to identify the type of product deviation in the product structure of a configuration.

The CTO product configuration contains only variants from the platform. So it's a 100% CTO configuration. If the product contains any ETO or DTO specifications, the interaction with the other variants needs to be validated at a product level. Of course, we embrace and stimulate the use of CTO variants within ETO and DTO products as much as possible.

So the first thing a company should do when implementing a Configure to Order strategy is defining a product platform. In this example, a derivative of the product platform of one of our customers within the manufacturing industry.

So if this is possible with LEGO or within the manufacturing industry, why not within the construction industry? So imagine this example with facades, doors, window openings, window frames, and bricks. In this example, we have already 324 different configurations as an end product for the facade.

Let's take this a level higher and look at the house. Take the roof, the facade, which is built up from the facade platform from the last slide, and take the house dimensions also in the equation. Now, we can make millions of housing configurations for our customers. I hope this will give you some inspiration about the possibilities for the manufacturing and construction industry.

The basis of Configure to Order is always a good defined modular product platform. We see four main pillars within the Configure to Order approach. We will need a review on product, processes, organization, and IT. These four pillars will have to be in balance. And a warning, do not start with IT.

First we start with the product. The product is your IP you put on the market. Make sure the platform is defined and that it matches the market needs. After definition, this platform can also be maintained by product management. Set up the correct processes within the organization, whereby each type of product is assigned to its own order process that is as efficient as possible.

Within companies, in general, the yellow process, the primary process is in place. But how to handle missing features from sales and improvements from the operations organization, this is often not clear. So it's time to implement new product introduction, R&D, and a change process in our organizations.

These processes feed the product platform, which is available for the sales and operations organization. On the basis of process, the organization will probably also have to be adjusted on certain points. New roles will arise that must be given a place, maybe even more people, or we move people to roles that better fits within their capabilities or competencies.

Next, and based on the CTO product, the processes and organization, we can design the IT landscape with which the organization will work in the coming years. Pim, can you introduce the IT landscape which we implement at our customers, implementing with their CTO strategy?

PIM SAARLOOS: We would like to show you how we look at the fully digital organized process within the Configure to Order team. First, an overview of the traditional steps in the manufacturing process within an organization. Sales defines a product or project where an agreement is reached with the customer. Information transfers from engineering to work preparation and production.

Once the product has been produced, it is transferred to the customer. And the service organization will take over responsibility and maintain the product. It sounds very simple, but the challenges and frustrations mentioned at the beginning of the presentations are present every day in these processes.

All kind of applications supporting a specific part of the process. How to share information from one system to the other by hand. The need for automation is huge when we look at the consequences of handling processes as mentioned in the previous slide. Managing information in one place, and linking it with information in other systems, is a requirement in nowadays complex application landscapes.

And companies quickly fall into the trap of customization. And there are always smart people in an organization who know how to integrate two applications with or without Excel. After these kind of initiatives, we often see a tango on one-on-one integration. On the integrations, that depends on specific knowledge that often leaves the organization.

So this is not scalable into the future and very difficult to maintain. System integration is meant to enable the flow of data within your organization. When a business object like an accepted 3D model or a change order changes, it likely has consequences outside its original location.

In other words, system integration should focus on the integration of business processes and related flow of relevant information. And integrations are most typically solved via point-to-point connections, a direct connection between two information systems.

And point-to-point connections appear in many forms-- for example, as a commercial plugin, as a manual export, or a custom solution made by an external expert, or via some tools found on the internet. And managing point-to-point connections can be a challenge because they rarely come alone.

In practice, many point-to-point connections exist, since nearly all information systems are related. This is an issue since central overview is lacking as a central orchestration. As a result, change data still gets overlooked and related processes simply go wrong, with headaches for many stakeholders in your company, especially your IT.

The alternative is an integration platform. We are objective when centralizing the data exchange between information systems by means of clear orchestration and a shared technology for setting up each point-to-point integration. Each organization is unique, as are related integration requirements.

So in order to fit within existing processes, the system integration should be flexible. The flexibility can be offered by using a low-code platform. Low-code focuses on data and business processes via scripting and assuring that your IT infrastructure is arranged properly.

The meaning of low-code is making use of standardized connectors, example scripts, IntelliSense syntax guidance while you're scripting, and extensive documentation or training options. And this slide is showing an overview of applications within our organization connected through an integration platform. And each application has a connector, a connection to the platform.

There are many standardized connectors for most use applications. But as long as a system has a REST API, a connector can be created easily. Within one or more scripts, the business logic to read or write information in a system is customized. And instead of a spaghetti of connections between applications, it offers a very structured methodology, which can be expanded over time.

Let's go through the whole process step by step. Let's take a look at the first step in the process. The sales process starts most often in a CRM application by entering customer and contact information.

The CRM stands for Customer Resource Management, where things like customer information, sales, service interactions, sales pipelines, proposals, et cetera are being managed. CPQ stands for Configure Price Quote. This is a business software solution designed to help companies to efficiently generate price quotes for complex and customizable products or services based upon a well-defined product platform.

So in CRM, a salesperson starts by creating a sales opportunity. And a lot of information defined in CRM is required in the CPQ process. So after entering the basic customer information, a quote can be generated with a quote number and other quote information.

When the quote has been created, the CPQ processes, CPQ the process can be automatically initiated. So all the relevant information will be handed over to CPQ by the integration platform-- quote number, customer information, contact information, product type, et cetera.

Within the CPQ system, the salesperson configures the product. The CPQ system knows all the design rules to ensure the parameters and options entered by the salesperson are valid. This logic is all defined in the system up front, based on the product platform maintained by product management.

When configuration has been entered, the exact price will be available and can be returned to the quote in the CRM system through the integration platform. The next step in the process is to hand over information from the CPQ system to the design automation process, using the PDM system and the Cadac application to create the 3D models and 2D drawings.

This is a highly complex process. And due to the possible large number of actions, this process can take a while. The design automation process involves actions like copying a base model in the PDM system, file numbering for newly created files, placing additional components in inventory assemblies, creating 2D drawings, et cetera.

And design automation can be used in various processes. We quickly think of creating complete models and drawings for the production process. But it may also be desirable to use design automation in the sales phase to create a necessary sales documentation. In this example, a sales model and drawing is created to use in the quotation process.

An image of the model is created from design information and is placed in the quotation document that is automatically created in the CPQ system. And the sales drawing is also automatically added to the quotation document.

And when the population document is ready, it can be automatically pushed to the CRM system by the integration platform. So as you have seen, the design automation process in combination with the PDM system is a very complex process, involving a large number of automated actions.

As a result, there are also many points of failure. If one part of the process fails, it could leave a big mess behind with unused documents in your PDM system. And it will cost a lot of time to do it all over again. Therefore, we implemented a phased methodology in our design automation approach.

The complex process is split up into four phases-- prepare, process, assemble, and manage. And we will take a look at each phase in a moment. But one thing to point out is the flexibility of this phased approach.

By splitting up the design automation process, we have the ability to outsource the processing part, where Inventor or Inventor Server does the magic. The process phase could, for example, be offloaded to Autodesk Platform Services. Let's take a detailed look at the phased approach and how the whole process comes together.

At first, the integration platform receives a message from an external system, in this case, the CPQ system. Cadac Connect X as a conductor of the whole process through a so-called orchestration script. This type of script is capable of creating a task. And it will wait until the task reports back to the script.

And the first task that involves adding a preparation job to the job queue of Autodesk Vault. And when the job is picked up by the job processor, it will take the input passed on from the CPQ system through the integration platform. Input could, for example, be the product type to instruct Vault to create a copy design of a base model, a destination folder in Vault, and so on.

It can also retrieve templates and design that data to ensure the next phase has all the inputs to be processed. The gathered data is temporarily stored as a zip file in Vault. And then the job report is staged back to the Integration Platform. And our orchestration script will start in the next task.

The second task involves adding a process job to the job queue. The process job is focusing on creating the CAD models and drawings or adapting a copy design. This task requires Inventor. But because we are using the job processor of Autodesk Vault, we are able to utilize Inventor server, which is usually a lot quicker than full Inventor.

When this job is picked up by the job processor, it will download the prepared zipped data from Vault, extract it, and execute the logic programmed for the product type. The logic can be programmed in either iLogic or through an add-in for Inventor, usually programmed in C Sharp or Visual Basic.

And when the magic has been applied to the 3D model and 2D drawings, the result of the process job will be temporarily stored and zipped in Vault again. And the job will report a status back to the Integration Platform to the orchestration to continue with the next task.

And the third task involves adding an assemble task to the job queue of Autodesk Vault. And this type of task is optional and will only be required if two or more process products needs to be assembled together. Because this task is handled by the job processor of Autodesk Vault, Inventor server can be utilized, combined with iLogic, or custom code in C Sharp, Visual Basic.

And the result of the assembled job will be temporarily zipped and stored in Vault again. And the job will report its status back to the Integration Platform to continue with the last phase. And the fourth task involves adding a Manage Job to the job queue of Autodesk Vault.

When this job is picked up by a job processor, it will download the zipped, processed, or assembled data from Vault extracted to the workspace, and open it in Inventor. This type of task requires a full version of Inventor on the job processing machine because Inventor is required to correctly check the CAD models and 2D drawings into Vault.

And once the checking is complete, there is an option to automatically change the states of the models and drawings. In the case of a CTO product, this is often the case. But in the case of an ETO product, the models and drawings will remain on a work-in-progress state to allow an engineer to make manual changes.

The nice thing about the platform is that it can handle many tasks in parallel. In this example, you see a separate timer script that runs every couple of minutes to monitor the job queue of Autodesk Vault. When there are more than, let's say, 15 design automation jobs in the job queue of Vault, the script can start an additional Azure machine to start helping handling the jobs.

With all this in mind, the system is capable of scaling itself up or down. OK, back to our sample process. When the quotation is accepted by the customer, the status will be indicated within the CPQ. And the process will automatically start in which the recipe is communicated from CPQ to design automation by the integration platform.

Design automation will then create all the models and documentation using jobs and store them within PDM. For a complete CTO order, PDM can also automatically release the documents, which no longer requires engineering hands.

The bill of material is automatically created and transferred to the ERP system. And all necessary neutral documentation is also created, such as PDF, direct files, or STEP files. And these are made available to other processes in the organization and can be retrieved or transferred by the integration platform.

When a design automation process is finished, the bill of material needs to be transferred from PDM to the supply chain process in ERP. And in this video, the PDM bill of material information has been transferred to the ERP system, and work preparation can convert this to production and purchasing orders.

Neutral documents are also available from the ERP system. This information from PDM can, of course, also be made available to the production departments. Pricing and stock information from ERP can be made available within PDM PD Integration Platform to help engineering to make smart choices.

Of course, the aftersales process cannot be forgotten. We often see that service people need a lot of time to collect the right information in order to provide customers with the right spare parts information. Who doesn't know the emails with photos of broken parts without additional item information with the request to redeliver them?

An integrated aftersales portal can save the customer and the service organization an enormous amount of time. A combination of product and pricing information from PDM and ERP come together in the Aftersales portal.

In this example, the customer is logged in to the Aftersales portal and selects the product he has purchased. You can see at a glance where the spare part kits have been defined for this product. And furthermore, the service manuals and videos have been made available in the portal.

In addition, the customer can open the model of the product, and select the available spare parts, and add them to the shopping cart. The price and availability of parts can be shown directly to the customer.

The customer can be guided by predefined views of semi-finished products, so that selecting parts or semi-finished products is made as easy as possible. The basket will then be submitted to quote request, and the service or an organization will convert it into a quote with correct pricing, so that the customer can order it.

Finally, a very important part of the digital process-- a product platform without proper product lifecycle management would be unthinkable. All processes to maintain this platform are implemented within the PLM environment. Think of new product introduction and change in quality management processes.

In this example, we see that the information from PDM such as the bill of material and the 3D model has been automatically transferred to the PLM environment. So people outside of engineering have all the information of the product and can start other processes on the available items.

Based on the item information, a change order can be started in PLM. And from the workflow in PLM, the change order can be pushed to the PDM environment as an engineering change order via the integration platform.

The items and documents subject to the change are automatically added to the engineering change order involved. The engineer will implement the change within the engineering change order in PDM. And as soon as the approved state is reached, the information is automatically pushed back to the change order within the PLM environment.

Here you see an overview of the complete application landscape, which we use to show this digital process in this presentation. Of course, we base a lot of processes on Autodesk and Cadac software as a solid base for implementing a digital process at our customers.

In addition to this Autodesk and Cadac software, we see a lot of variation in the field of CRM, CPQ, and ERP, and other process tools. All of which can be linked to this process through the integration platform.

We have examples of customers where more than 20 applications now have been integrated in this way and support their entire digital process. Mischa, can you show some real life examples of customer projects?

MISCHA VAN BRANDWIJK: Thanks, Pim. Yes, let's show some of our customers, which stepped into the Configure to Order journey. And here you see a sample of a customer of ours-- of mine-- a construction company in the Netherlands. And about 3 or 5 years ago, they started with the CTO journey.

And in this moment, they produce houses, and even blocks of houses, fully automated from sales to factory. The Facade Configurator is giving creativity to architects to set specific characteristics to the outside walls of each house.

And within the CPQ system, the price is calculated. The quote is generated. Permit application documents are created, and even it results in a CAMP file handed over by the integration platform to the bricklaying robot that constructs the facades.

This is a design automation example of customer van Wijnen. And in this video, we see that the recipe from CPQ is translated to jobs, which creates and places all components within the 3D model to create the right documentation for those permit processes. And these documents are automatically delivered back to the CPQ system. Better quoting processes are organized.

You see that all the jobs build up from parts, to assemblies, to higher assemblies, to modules. And then at the end, all the modules from the different houses are being assembled through the assembled job in the main top assembly.

So when the top assembly of the complete housing project is finished, we can create all the permit drawings in 2D, where they used-- in the past, they used Revit for these drawings. And now, they are fully automated within the design automation solution with the use of Inventor.

So another customer, HTC Parking and Security, built speed gates for security in parking garages, hospitals, commercial areas, and also military terrains. So sit back and enjoy some popcorn while this video is playing. And they started their Configure to Order transition three years ago.

Already, two platforms are produced fully automatically from CPQ to production. In this example, you see how within the automation, the recipe from CPQ is used to automatically create all models, production documentation, and bill of materials.

It's quite impressive how all those parts are being built up with the zero touch of engineers. It's completely automated. Also, information for production and welding robots is being generated automatically.

At this moment, it's all mechanical. Future steps are also to integrate the electrical documentation and engineering within the design automation processes.

It's quite amazing, the amount of detail in all those welding assemblies and the welding drawings, which are being placed here.

We just speed up the video, of course. Because in real life, I think this process takes about 1.5 hours to generate all those documents, and models, and bill of materials, and transfer it also to their ERP system.

All right, so we hope that we have inspired you with this industry class and gave you some insights about the Configure to Order journey possible within the manufacturing and construction industry. Of course, we hope to see you step into the journey, like many others in the industry.

And we believe Configure to Order is the method to achieve more wins, build greater, better, and sustainable products, and stay ahead of your competition. Be sure to check the handout available online in this session, with a lot more in-depth information on this subject.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. Add a comment to the class page, or if you like this class, please click Recommend. Thank you for your attention.