TIW Technology, Inc.

SOC FAQ's

What is Product Configuration?	Your customer is ordering a bicycle and he wants a boy’s bike with a 26" frame, knobby tires, an 18-speed derailleur, an off-road gel seat and 12 wheel reflectors. And, by the way, he wants it in red.
What are the benefits of using Product Configuration?	Improved customer service by accurately communicating price and order status to the customer. Reduced overhead through single point order/quote capture with little or no manual intervention from "product experts". Better utilization of engineering talent through eliminating the review of new orders and/or proliferation of item numbers, BOM’s, routings, etc. Improved inventory accuracy and product cost information through increased BOM and routing accuracy for customized product requests.
What are the key elements of the design?	You can select from a list of choices with availability and pricing. Dependent choices are supported. Variable information can be entered. Configurable kitting is supported. Multiple ways to display/print configurations. Finished good part number determination. Rules system is based on BOM. Information available to material planning.
How important is the product architecture to the support of the Configurator?	In order for product configuration to be integrated into software it must be part of the design foundation. It is not an option that can be added! WorkShop contains a Configuration Backbone design. That means that the ability to use the TIW Sales Order Configurator (SOC) starts down at the BOM level with Modular and Variable bill types. This is a much more elegant and cost effective design than a configurator that uses a template.
What are the drawbacks to using a Template?	Typically, a configurator is an add-on function which is inventory based. The user sets up a "template" and adds to it the inventory item numbers that can be selected during order entry. The better inventory based configurators offer a way to establish "rules". The purpose of the rules is to allow the user another choice based on his previous selection. There are several drawbacks inherent in this approach: A separate maintenance effort is required to keep the templates up to date and synchronized with the BOM's. Rarely can the choices be more than a couple of rules deep. Usually there is no pass through to manufacturing orders or material planning because the configurator is not an integral part of your system. The kitting function is not integrated into the configurator, therefore kits can not be configured. One item number is used for all configurations or a unique item number must defined for every configuration. Only a "choice" can be made. This excludes using variable units of measure because they cannot have predefined "choices".
The advantages of a Configuration Backbone are?	*The ability to perform product configuration and costing is built into the BOM structure in WorkShop.* Thus, simply maintaining the BOM keeps the configurator up-to-date and ensures that a product that cannot be built is not offered at the sales order level. The BOM structure also acts as a set of rules with a large number of levels and permutations. Furthermore, a feature called "SOC Inhibit" allows branches of the BOM structure to be selectively "turned off" or unavailable during the sales order entry process. Yet these portions of the BOM are still available at the manufacturing order level for internal engineering configuration. Sales order configurations that match predefined configurations use unique item numbers. Conversely, those that do not may use a generic item number with special price and cost support. This is a much more flexible system that allows the user to choose which configurations to track as standard finished goods and which to treat as onetime orders. Besides allowing "choices" to be made during the sales order entry process, variable information can be entered. For example, the number of reflectors on a bicycle can be specified. The information in a configured sales order is automatically available to the manufacturing material planning process. Consequently, work orders to build the item, manufacture subassemblies, and drive component requirements all the way down to raw materials can be created.
Does the Configuration Backbone include kitting?	Kitting is part of the BOM structure and as such kits can be configured at the sales order level.

Last modified October 01, 2008