Managing Customer Order Driven Engineering. An Interdisciplinary and Design Oriented Approach

摘要

This thesis addresses a specific subset of production situations, namely, the engineer-to-order plants which produce industrial equipment. This type of production plant is concerned with the engineering and production of complex industrial equipment to fill specific customer orders. These plants operate in a market which can be characterized as being extremely dynamic and erratic. The research described in this thesis deals with the control of a non-physical process, the customer order driven engineering which precedes the physical production of a product. Important decisions are made during this non-physical phase which have a significant effect upon the performance of the whole company. Up until now, very few or no publications have appeared on this subject. In view of current market developments, this can be seen as a serious omission. The substance of this thesis is an initial contribution to fill the gap in the literature in this area.