Developing separate or integrated configurators? A longitudinal case study
通过对一家大型工程按订单生产公司的纵向案例研究，比较了集成销售与技术配置器与独立配置器的开发过程，揭示了团队组建、规划、问题及绩效，为ETO公司开发配置器提供指导。
Configurators have the potential to revolutionize the business processes of Engineering-to-order (ETO) companies. Despite their positive impacts on ETO companies' operations and strategies, there is a paucity of empirical investigations examining the development processes and practices of configurators, in particular integrated configurators. We, thus, carry out a longitudinal case study in a large ETO company to study and compare the characteristics and dynamics of the development process of an integrated sales and technical (ST) configurator with these of a sales configurator and a technical configurator. First, the findings uncover the nature of the integrated ST configurator development process in terms of development team formation, development planning activities, processes and activities that went wrong, and unplanned events and their handling. Second, performance evaluation with respect to several criteria contributes to a holistic picture of the development process of the integrated ST configurator. Based on the findings, we further shed light on managerial implications including the business process changes associated with the application of the integrated ST configurator and the need of having a clear, comprehensive project plan before development. To conclude, our study is expected to broaden ETO companies’ understanding of the development processes of integrated configurators and to guide them to make wise decisions in developing configurators.