Supporting framework to improve Engineer-To-Order product lead-times

Company's competitive advantage can be achieved through its agile capability to satisfy customers’ needs by developing and manufacturing efficiently customized products. So performing ETO (Engineer-To-Order) product with lower lead-times is a real challenge that requires new approaches. This paper investigates a new framework to help decision-makers in adopting the right management systems to organize customer order fulfillment from request to delivery. The European Project “ESTIMATE”, Eurostars Program, is lead to sustain successful ETO processes. The ESTIMATE framework aims at providing guidelines to perform successful ETO product. Main drivers for ETO product fulfillment are identified regarding several dimensions and a strategy of decreasing lead-times is explored and discussed in detail. This strategy is called “shifting strategy“.