Deliver customized products at scale with DriveWorks
An increasing number of B2B buyers want custom products they can configure to meet their exact requirements. Their expectations are high, and they want to buy products with tailored specifications.
The good news is that the demand for customization is forecast to continue growing. However, for many custom product manufacturers, this presents a challenge. Traditional manufacturing processes are manual and struggle to cope with large volumes of custom product orders. Bottlenecks, errors, quoting delays, and quality control can become real issues.
This blog explores how DriveWorks enables manufacturers to deliver custom products at scale, without compromising accuracy, quality, or speed.
What does meeting the demand for customized products mean?
Meeting demand for customized products means being able to:
- Configure products quickly and accurately
- Generate accurate pricing
- Deliver quotes faster than your competitors
- Create drawings and manufacturing documents automatically
- Maintain product quality and design consistency
- Scale sales and engineering processes without adding headcount
Manufacturers that rely on manual processes often struggle to keep up with growing customization requests, leading to slow quote turnaround times, errors, rework, and ultimately, lost sales.
Why is demand for customized products increasing?
Customers expect their B2B buying experience to match their B2C experience. That means configuring products that meet their unique requirements rather than choosing from a catalog of standard options.
The increase in demand for customized products can be seen across manufacturing industries, including:
- Industrial machinery
- Materials handling
- Doors & windows
- Furniture
- HVAC
- Transportation
- Construction
- Medical equipment
- Enclosures
As configuration complexity grows, manufacturers need processes that enable customization without increasing timelines or headcount.
Challenge 1: Scaling customization without creating bottlenecks
One of the challenges in meeting the demand for custom products is that many processes rely heavily on engineering resources. Engineers spend significant time modifying existing designs, updating CAD models, creating BOMs, and helping sales colleagues with quote requests.
As order volumes increase, these tasks can quickly become bottlenecks.
How DriveWorks helps
DriveWorks enables manufacturers to automate repetitive SOLIDWORKS® tasks. Instead of manually modifying CAD models, drawings, and manufacturing documentation for every order, engineers can capture product rules and automate the generation of designs and manufacturing information.
With DriveWorks, manufacturers can:
- Automate repetitive SOLIDWORKS tasks
- Generate custom SOLIDWORKS models and drawings automatically
- Reduce repetitive engineering work
- Standardize design and configuration rules across teams
- Increase engineering capacity without increasing headcount
- Free up engineering time to work on higher-value tasks
Challenge 2: Delivering custom products without sacrificing quality
Many manufacturers find that increasing customization increases the risk of errors. Common issues include incorrect dimensions, missing components, and inaccurate pricing.
How DriveWorks helps
DriveWorks captures engineering and design rules to ensure every product configuration is manufacturable and follows approved quality standards. This reduces reliance on manual processes and helps to eliminate errors.
With DriveWorks, manufacturers can:
- Apply consistent design rules across all projects
- Prevent invalid configurations
- Reduce errors
- Improve quality and consistency across custom orders
- Capture engineering knowledge and design rules
Challenge 3: Producing custom drawings faster
Manually creating drawings can take hours or even days for each custom order.
When engineering teams receive multiple drawing requests, backlogs build up quickly, and drawing creation becomes a major source of delays.
How DriveWorks helps
DriveWorks automates SOLIDWORKS drawing and manufacturing document creation for custom products.
With DriveWorks, manufacturers can automatically generate:
- Manufacturing drawings
- Assembly drawings
- Customer approval drawings
- BOMs
Challenge 4: Providing fast and accurate quotes
Customers want quotes quickly, and delays in the sales process can result in lost deals. Manual quoting processes often involve engineering reviews, spreadsheet calculations, and multiple approvals.
How DriveWorks helps
DriveWorks CPQ solution enables sales teams, distributors, and customers to configure products and generate accurate quotes using predefined pricing and product rules. DriveWorks 3D product configurator solution enables users to configure and visualize custom products in 3D and to see changes to their options in real-time via a browser.
With DriveWorks, manufacturers can:
- Make complex configuration easy for sales teams, distributors, and customers
- Calculate pricing automatically
- Generate accurate branded quotes
- Reduce manual pricing errors
- Generate consistent quotes across different sales channels
Challenge 5: Delivering custom products faster
Reducing lead times is key to winning sales in a competitive marketplace. When design and quoting processes are manual, delays can occur at numerous points throughout the buying cycle.
How DriveWorks helps
DriveWorks connects product configuration, design automation, quoting, and document generation. This removes many of the delays that happen when teams use manual processes.
With DriveWorks, manufacturers can:
- Reduce time from enquiry to order
- Speed up quote turnaround times
- Streamline communication between sales and engineering
- Prepare manufacturing documentation automatically
Frequently asked questions
How can manufacturers scale product customization?
Manufacturers can scale customization by using DriveWorks design automation, 3D product configurator, and CPQ solutions to simplify configuration and quoting, and automate design generation and document creation
How do you reduce errors in customized product manufacturing?
Standardized product rules and automated design processes eliminate manual errors and ensure every configuration follows predefined engineering rules and logic.
What is the best way to speed up quoting for custom products?
CPQ solutions simplify configuration and automate pricing calculations and quote generation, enabling faster and more accurate responses to customer inquiries.
How can engineering teams handle more custom orders?
Design automation reduces repetitive CAD and documentation tasks, enabling engineers to manage bigger order volumes without creating bottlenecks.
What technology helps manufacturers deliver customized products faster?
Manufacturers use DriveWorks to simplify configuration and automate engineering, quoting, and documentation processes.
Why manufacturers use DriveWorks to meet the demand for customized products
Manufacturers using DriveWorks process more quotes, reduce lead times, and increase sales volume.
SAFE-T-FAB processes 15% more quotes.
Trystar reduced lead times and increased sales volumes.
Lawrence David reduced turnaround times from several days to as little as one day.
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