The intense competition in the global manufacturing industry and the restructuring of the supply chain have led to domestic demand and export growth in my country's manufacturing sector being lower than anticipated. Concurrently, consumer demand is continually evolving, with a rise in personalized needs and a shortening of renewal cycles, presenting new challenges. In this scenario, the traditional MTS (Make-To-Stock) manufacturing-by-inventory model is no longer suitable, and issues such as inventory risk and predictive risk have become a looming threat for manufacturing companies.

For this reason, the MTO (Make-To-Order) manufacturing-to-order model is increasingly recognized and adopted by domestic manufacturing enterprises due to its high responsiveness, low inventory characteristics, and flexible steering.

Under the MTO model, an order can be treated as an independent project; however, manufacturing enterprises often encounter situations where multiple projects are executed simultaneously, necessitating centralized management and coordination of various related projects, such as resource coordination among different projects, and specific elements like manpower, materials, production time, and schedules. This requires the introduction of project set management concepts (characteristics of project sets: multiple projects simultaneously, interrelated projects), which imposes higher demands on the production management of manufacturing enterprises.

The MTS model is akin to single project management. Manufacturing enterprises are comfortable managing production through traditional ERP systems. However, after transitioning to the MTO production model and adopting project set management concepts, traditional ERP systems struggle to effectively manage conflicts and coordination among multiple projects and cannot keep pace with the project set management approach in light of increasing production categories, significant and frequent demand fluctuations, complex production processes, and a growing number of temporary projects. Given that the old system is not user-friendly, if an enterprise wishes to customize and develop a new system, it will first face high initial development costs, ongoing costs for additional features, and daily maintenance, which will require considerable time. In this predicament, manufacturing enterprises urgently need a suitable solution.

Rubik's Cube Netlist offers a unique solution to the new demands of project set management in manufacturing enterprises. Rubik's Cube Netlist is a configurable software platform that allows users to flexibly set up personalized usage scenarios and quickly adjust to changes in the market and enterprises. The platform is fully applicable to the multi-project coordination management of the MTO production model. Through digital capabilities, the production delivery capacity of manufacturing enterprises is comprehensively enhanced, overall product quality is controlled, and unique core competitiveness is established.

Advantages of the MTO Item Set Management System Based on Rubik's Cube Netlist

Flexible custom order production schemes and piece-rate rules: in the MTO model, multiple projects run in parallel, with differing processes and raw materials. Enterprises can create order schemes that meet their needs through the rich configuration module built into Rubik's Cube Netlist and can also customize piece-rate rules to accurately reflect production costs and profits.

Flexible production processes, achieving process standardization and automation: predicting changes and additions to orders under the project set management concept is challenging. Rubik's Cube Netlist provides a flexible production process. Enterprises can conveniently plan and adjust production tasks at any time based on real-time order changes and continuous order additions. The modularization of the process allows for automatic adjustments of business processes while automatically notifying relevant personnel to ensure orderly production.

Real-time tracking of production progress and control of product quality: with multiple projects running in parallel, controlling production progress and product quality is particularly crucial. Through Rubik's Cube Netlist, personnel in manufacturing enterprises can track order production progress in real time, access product files instantly, ensuring timely order delivery and maintaining the quality of ordered products.

Seamless integration with external systems to provide decision-making support and control capabilities: project set management involves senior management dealing with strategic projects and organizing multiple projects. With the pioneering 'external field group' function in the industry, Rubik's Cube Netlist can achieve seamless connections with various external systems of the enterprise, providing managers with real-time control over key internal information such as personnel, finances, materials, production, supply, and sales, while also offering comprehensive statistical analysis and accurate data support for decision-making.

Automated data analysis and raw material procurement forecasting: forecasting demand in the MTO mode for manufacturing enterprises is challenging and requires a certain production cycle; if necessary, there will be some inventory needs. Rubik's Cube Netlist provides users with customized material analysis reports, which production managers can access on demand. It can more intuitively and clearly display material changes at each stage, automatically generate purchase forecasts, and enable one-click pre-purchase submissions.

After years of dedication to research and development and continuous improvement, Rubik's Cube Netlist has garnered over 150,000 loyal users, including medium and large manufacturing enterprises both domestically and internationally. Let's see how they achieve production management through Rubik's Cube Netlist.

Huawei Representative Office in UAE

Huawei's UAE representative office utilized Rubik's Cube Netlist as a development platform to create a project set management system supporting the MTO production model, which took only one month from demand to launch. The new system integrates base station surveys, designs, and material requirements into management, summarizing materials based on base station orders to guide production and transportation planning. After its launch, the UAE representative office continued to optimize the new system based on the flexible expansion capabilities of Rubik's Cube Netlist, quickly adapting and adding functions according to actual situations and requirements, ensuring the new system fully supports all project needs. The implementation of the new system not only enhances overall work efficiency but also improves the manager's ability to oversee project progress. Additionally, the close integration of all links accelerates the project timeline.

Wade Crane

Huade Crane is a professional manufacturer of non-standard European cranes, operating under a typical MTO production model where each order is treated as a project, usually in a multi-project parallel mode. It employs Rubik's Cube Netlist to customize the system application in line with Huade's entire process. Through its unique integration feature, it synchronizes SAP data with the application in both directions, assisting departments in tracking various data and process progress such as production, delivery, and installation in real-time, replacing Oracle P6 Project Management. The adoption of the new system significantly enhances work efficiency, improves managers' overall control over project progress, facilitates close cooperation among various processes, and accelerates the production timeline. After the system went live, Huade continued to leverage the flexibility and scalability of Rubik's Cube Netlist to continuously enhance and expand its functions to meet the evolving management needs of enterprises at different stages of development, greatly supporting Huade's enterprise management innovation requirements.