For many years, customized manufacturing was treated as an exception. A special project. A one-off order that required extra coordination, spreadsheets, and “manual fixes” around the ERP. Today, that assumption no longer holds.
Across multiple sectors of the Greek manufacturing industry — from metal fabrication and marine equipment to defense and industrial machinery — engineer-to-order (ETO) and project-based production are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Customers demand tailored products, smaller batches, and strict compliance with industry or client-specific standards, without accepting longer lead times or cost overruns.
This shift fundamentally changes the way production must be planned, costed, and executed.
And it exposes a critical weakness: most generic ERP systems were never designed for this level of manufacturing complexity.
Engineer-to-Order: complexity beyond design
In engineer-to-order environments, complexity does not stem only from engineering design. It emerges throughout the entire operational lifecycle. Unlike make-to-stock or repetitive manufacturing, ETO production is characterized by:
- frequently changing Bills of Materials (BOMs)
- custom routings and workflows per order
- project-specific cost structures
- continuous interaction between engineering, procurement, production, and finance
Each new order can introduce design revisions, alternative materials, or different compliance requirements — often late in the process.
Consider, for example:
- Defense manufacturing, where protective enclosures must be customized according to MIL-STD requirements for vibration, temperature, humidity, or electromagnetic shielding, depending on whether the end customer is the Air Force or the Navy.
- Marine and shipbuilding environments, where equipment such as heat exchangers is custom-made to fit the specific layout, power requirements, and classification standards (Lloyd’s, DNV, etc.) of each vessel — including retrofit projects for older ships.
In such cases, production planning, costing, and scheduling cannot rely on static assumptions. They must adapt continuously to engineering changes and real-world constraints.
Why generic ERP systems fail in ETO environments
Most ERP platforms on the market were originally designed to support stable products and repeatable processes. Their data models and workflows assume:
- fixed BOMs
- predictable routings
- limited engineering changes after order confirmation
This works well in high-volume, repetitive manufacturing. It fails — often quietly at first — in engineer-to-order and project-based production.
The most common failure points include:
1. Assumption of repeatability
Generic ERP systems treat variation as an exception. In ETO, variation is the rule. Each order behaves like a mini-project, yet the system expects predefined items and routings.
2. Limited tolerance for BOM and routing changes
Frequent BOM updates, late-stage design revisions, or order-specific configurations quickly create data inconsistencies, manual workarounds, and version-control issues.
3. Disconnected Engineering, Production, and Costing
In many setups, engineering tools (CAD/PLM), production planning, and financial costing operate in silos. Changes made by engineering do not automatically propagate to procurement, scheduling, or cost roll-ups. The result is familiar to many manufacturers:
- unreliable delivery dates
- inaccurate costing
- heavy reliance on spreadsheets
- loss of control as order volume grows
At scale, this becomes unsustainable.
Engineer-to-Order requires a different ERP architecture
ETO manufacturing does not need “more ERP features.” It requires a fundamentally different ERP design philosophy.
An ERP system designed for manufacturers must be built around:
- jobs, not just items
- workflows, not static routings
- real production constraints, not theoretical plans
In practice, this means supporting non-repetitive work as a first-class operational model — not as an exception handled outside the system.
Managing custom projects without losing control
Modern manufacturing ERP platforms designed for engineer-to-order environments address these challenges by tightly integrating engineering, production, and financial processes.
Using Epicor Kinetic as a reference example of such an architecture, several principles become clear.
Job & Order Management as the operational core
In ETO environments, every order behaves like a project. Job and order management capabilities allow manufacturers to:
- convert customer orders directly into production jobs
- assign tasks, materials, and resources dynamically
- track progress and costs in real time
- manage multiple concurrent projects without losing visibility
Instead of forcing projects into item-based structures, the ERP adapts to the reality of project-driven manufacturing.
Product configuration without manual rework
Mass customization requires speed and accuracy. A built-in product configurator enables:
- on-the-fly configuration of complex, dimensional products
- rule-based generation of valid configurations
- automatic creation of order-specific BOMs and routings
Once the customer selects the required characteristics, pricing, procurement requirements, and production data flow automatically through the system — reducing errors and eliminating manual BOM creation.
This is especially critical in environments where each configuration must comply with technical standards or customer-specific constraints.
Dynamic BOMs and CAD-to-ERP integration
In engineer-to-order production, BOMs are living entities. Deep integration between CAD/PLM systems and ERP allows engineers to:
- update BOMs directly from the design environment
- push revisions automatically into procurement and production
- ensure all departments work with the latest version of the design
This eliminates duplicate data entry and prevents costly misalignment between engineering intent and shop-floor execution.
Real-time, project-based costing
Cost uncertainty is one of the biggest risks in ETO manufacturing. Project-based costing capabilities allow manufacturers to:
- track actual costs per job as production progresses
- compare planned vs actual costs in real time
- identify deviations early, before margins erode
Instead of discovering overruns after project completion, decision-makers gain visibility while corrective action is still possible.
From exception handling to scalable custom manufacturing
The key difference between struggling ETO operations and scalable ones is not the level of customization — it is system design. When engineer-to-order production is treated as an exception:
- complexity increases exponentially
- manual processes multiply
- control erodes as volume grows
When it is supported by an ERP system designed around manufacturing reality, customization becomes manageable, predictable, and profitable.
Choosing ERP for the reality of modern manufacturing
As customization and project-based production become standard across more industries, manufacturers face a strategic choice.
They can continue adapting generic ERP platforms through workarounds, spreadsheets, and custom code — or they can adopt ERP architectures that were designed from the outset for how factories actually operate.
Engineer-to-order manufacturing is not a niche.
It is a stress test for ERP design.
And only systems built with manufacturing at their core can pass it.
Is your ERP designed for engineer-to-order production?
Explore how modern manufacturing ERP architectures support customization without chaos.
