PCAT: A Software System for Cross-Product Commonality Analysis in Engineer-to-Order Manufacturing
Source abstract
Abstract
Engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers face persistent cost and complexity challenges driven by product variety, including duplicate components, redundant variants, and inconsistent procurement setups. Although enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems contain detailed Bills of Materials (BOMs) and procurement records, they typically lack portfolio-wide support for systematic cross-product commonality analysis without substantial manual effort. Structured approaches to design reuse and modularization in ETO contexts exist, but lightweight portfolio-level analytics tools operating on exported enterprise data remain scarce, and companies often still rely on ad hoc spreadsheet analyses. This paper introduces product commonality analysis tools (PCATs) and develops and evaluates one such tool in an action-research collaboration with a European ETO laser manufacturer. The PCAT operates on exported enterprise data to provide interactive portfolio-level views of component reuse and cross-product consistency. Usefulness is evaluated through scenario-based think-aloud usability sessions and a functional comparison against Excel workarounds, standard ERP/PLM reporting, and vendor customizations. The results indicate that a lightweight PCAT can integrate into existing ERP/PLM workflows with minimal disruption and reduce the effort required to prepare reusable portfolio views for engineering and procurement reviews.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Product Development and Customization · Manufacturing Process and Optimization · Flexible and Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Department of Business and Sustainability, University of Southern Denmark, 6000 Kolding, Denmark
NKT Photonics A/S, Bregnerødvej 144, 3460 Birkerød, Denmark
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