PVC door manufacturing · Live
Build-to-order, without the spreadsheet chain.
Every order is a different size, and nothing can be made to stock. That makes order accuracy and production sequencing the whole business — and both were living in spreadsheets.
Build-to-orderorder type
Spreadsheetsreplaced
In production usestatus
What it replaced, and what it does now.
Before
- Each order's specification captured in a spreadsheet per order
- Production sequence decided daily, from memory
- Changes to an order communicated by phone, sometimes after cutting
- No single list of what was due this week
- Delivery commitments made without checking the floor
Now
- Specification captured once, structured, and visible to the floor
- A production queue the floor works from
- Changes recorded against the order, with who changed what
- One view of what is due, and what will not make it
- Commitments made against what the queue can actually absorb
Questions people actually ask
What makes build-to-order different to model?
Nothing can be made ahead, so every order is its own specification and the sequence the floor works in decides whether commitments are met. Most stock-oriented systems model neither well, because they assume a catalogue of fixed items.
How are specification changes handled?
As a recorded change against the order, visible to the floor immediately, with the previous values kept. The failure mode being designed against is a change that reaches the office but not the person cutting.
Can this handle quotations as well as orders?
Quotation to order is a natural extension of the same specification model, and is the sort of thing added once the core is in real use rather than built speculatively up front.
What went into it
Let's talk
Could this work for your unit?
The stage list would be yours, not this one — that is most of the point. Tell us how your process actually runs.