Why engineering has to be managed differently and how it works

There are key figu­res for the manage­ment of sales. Inco­ming orders. Turno­ver. Easy to measure and in a way also asso­cia­ted with propor­tio­nal work. It is obvious that large orders require more effort than small orders. This is how you can manage sales.

There are key figu­res for control­ling manu­fac­tu­ring. Number of items. Easy to measure and in a way also asso­cia­ted with propor­tio­nal work. It is obvious that a large number of items requi­res more produc­tion time than a small number of items. So you can manage manufacturing.

And engi­nee­ring? Well, if the big order is a repeat order, and the design was finis­hed properly at the time, then it has nothing to do. If the produc­tion volume is doubled, engi­nee­ring may not care. Conver­sely, small orders can gene­rate great effort in engi­nee­ring, to fulfill special requests.

Engi­nee­ring cannot ther­e­fore be control­led like sales and also not like manu­fac­tu­ring. Now what?

The design work can be control­led most safely via confi­gura­ble products. These are products where there is a well defi­ned stan­dard, well defi­ned opti­ons and good docu­men­ta­tion of what is customer-specific.

In the case of an order, it is very easy to see which work falls into which cate­gory. This crea­tes a quan­tity struc­ture for the requi­red work. The basis for this is the product struc­ture. Whether it is inte­gra­ted in terms of IT tech­no­logy or not is of secon­dary importance in comparison.

I will be happy to support you in setting up a sales-support­ing product struc­ture, should you be inte­res­ted, just let me know!