August 26, 2009 – 10:41 am
Product complexity is driven by large number of options. Companies struggle to determine which feature choices are driving complexity. They typically “randomly cut choices” to streamline and rationalize SKUs. The cost of product complexity is tremendous on engineering. The current PLM systems do not have a method to measure this and provide intelligent feedback to engineers on how to standardize platforms to reduce engineering and maintenance costs.
This article clearly details the metrics around product complexity and how to solve this issue.
August 25, 2009 – 1:55 pm
The number of build combinations depends on which features are included. The build combinations is the product mix or the marketing mix. Understanding this is important as product complexity is a key driver of process complexity.
August 21, 2009 – 3:39 pm
A product is a collection of features, and each feature has mutually exclusive options. If a feature has only two options, then the choice is like a coin toss. The information contained in that choice is measured by entropy.
Entropy is a concept from classical thermodynamics that deals with the amount of disorder in a [...]
Advances in interconnection technologies are driving an increasingly demand-driven market. Customers are learning to expect to get what they want, when they want it, how they want it. And they tell you in each and every interaction they have with your company, or not. In a demand-driven world, increasing product variation and complexity in your [...]
By Kathy Chiang
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Also tagged analytics, choice combinations, clusters, complexity, cross sell, customer fulfillment, customers, data mining, demand, demand driven, intelligent, long tail, margin, margins, markets, Pareto, POS data, predictive analytics, product mix, revenue, suggestive selling, upsell, variants, variation
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This morning I was talking to the VP of business process improvement for a company that sells industrial machinery. Their products are highly configurable. She told me that every year they have 50% new configurations they have never seen before. The number of choices on their products has grown over time. ”A salesperson can’t know everything about the product,” [...]
By Radhika Subramanian
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Also tagged complexity, configurable, configuration, cross sell, customer fulfillment, customers, demand driven, demand shaping, industrial, machinery, margin, order, order fulfillment, predictive analytics, product, product variety, sales funnel, salesperson, suggestive selling, upsell
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A product is a collection of features, and each feature has alternative options. Understanding features helps determine strategies such as late staging. Some features are tangible, material things about the product: which engine, how much memory, Bluetooth. Other features are abstract or soft, like geographic region or sales channel. Among tangible features, distinctions can be [...]
By Roy Marsten
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Also tagged analytics, choice combinations, customers, demand, demand driven, features, long tail, margin, options, orders, POS data
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One of the most important components in choice complexity is the product configuration itself, the mixture of product options that give a product its unique signature. Obviously the typical product orderable options are needed to analyze the complexity of a product, but other more abstract options can offer surprising insights into product and customer behaviors.
A [...]
By Mike Merrill
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Also tagged analytics, attribute, attribution, choice combinations, complexity, configuration, customer fulfillment, customers, demand driven, demand shaping, long tail, margin, options, product, product extension, product mix, quality, sales mix, trends
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Possible combinations
This is a question with several answers. The easiest answer is the least useful. The number of possible build combinations, or unique configurations, is easily computed by multiplying the number of options for each feature. For example, if your product has feature A with 3 options, feature B with 2 options and feature C [...]
By Roy Marsten
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Also tagged analytics, BTO, build combinations, build to order, choice combinations, configuration, customer fulfillment, customers, demand driven, demand shaping, features, manufacturing, options, product management, product mix, proliferation, sales data, sales history, SKU
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1. Kit
A kit is a collection of parts that are used together for some purpose — for example, all the parts needed to implement air conditioning on a particular model of a car. A kit is assigned its own part number.
2. BOM
BOM stands for bill of materials. When a customer makes a selection of choices [...]
By Roy Marsten
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Also tagged analytics, build to order, build to stock, choice combinations, cost, customer fulfillment, demand driven, demand shaping, kit, margin, POS data, revenue
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