Work
From configuration into manufacturing
For Technics & Applications I worked on a configuration solution for slatted pool covers.
What makes this project useful as a case is that configuration did not stop at a quotation or a visual model. The product calculations continued into manufacturing data.
The product
Pools are far from always rectangular.
Fillets, curves and other shapes mean the slats of a cover do not all have the same length. Each slat has to be calculated to the correct size and produced in the correct sequence. The motorised system adds another technical layer around that geometry.
A customer can describe one pool shape, but production ultimately needs an ordered series of individual parts.
What the configurator had to know
The important step was turning the pool geometry into manufacturing intent.
The system needed enough product knowledge to understand the shape, divide it into the required slats, calculate the length of every individual slat and preserve the order in which those pieces belonged in the cover.
That is more than choosing an article number. Configuration becomes a way of generating technical product data.
From configuration to CNC
The configuration did not only determine what was sold. It also delivered the information with which the slats could be cut to size, in sequence, on CNC.
That removes an important translation step. The geometry and product logic used during configuration can continue into the data manufacturing needs, instead of somebody interpreting the order again afterwards.
This is the kind of connection I mean when I use CPQM: Configure, Price, Quote, Manufacture.
The extra letter is not the interesting part. The continuity of the product knowledge is.
Why this matters beyond this product
The real value is not one formula for the length of a slat.
It sits in the model that knows which product is being configured, how its geometry becomes individual parts, which order those parts require and what manufacturing finally needs to receive.
The same principle applies to many configurable technical products: the closer the configured product definition gets to something engineering and production can actually use, the less knowledge has to be reconstructed downstream.
What I take from this
A configurator becomes much more useful when it is treated as part of the engineering flow rather than only as a sales interface.
That idea still drives how I look at product models today: configuration should preserve engineering intent far enough that CAD, BOM generation or manufacturing output can continue from the same underlying definition.