Configuring System Products With CTO And ETO Components: Framework and Conceptual Modelling

This article proposes an approach to configure system-products, encompassing both well-defined components (Configure-to-Order) and those requiring engineering (Engineer-to-Order components). While the configurator can't directly configure ETO components, it captures customer requirements for subsequent design. The configurator focuses on configuring CTO components, generating a list of requirements for both system products and ETO components. Based on
literature a method for modeling a system including CTO and ETO products has been developed. The suggested method has been tested in an ETO company specializing in the manufacturing of Laser Systems, this model leverages the Product Variant Master (PVM) to incorporate system requirements such as Wavelength Range, Output Power, and Polarization Maintaining as well as requirements for the ETO components like Amplification Level, Fiber Doping. Besides this, the configurator includes solution space and constraints for configuring the CTO components like Amplifier Fiber Length, Wavelength Monitoring, Substrate Materials, etc. By combining CTO and ETO components in the configurator, the company obtains an overview of which components are needed in order to design the systemproducts, along with a complete list of requirements for system products and ETO components at an early stage. This enables a reduction in lead time and improvement in quality.