Dear all,

I have a problem. I work in a company where the 100% of the sold products are customised (generic + configured). The Configurator is immense. Nowadays the Engineering Department is the responsible of maintaining the items, features, options, boms and routings. The sales department is the responsible of maintaining the price list configured according features and options.

The sales department is always complaining because when the Engineering Department introduces any change in the features or options they do not receive all or on time information for changing the constrains for generating price. At the end we find that some invoices with wrong prices (more or less amount) and this is inadmissible.

I have been emphasising the Engineering Department that is very important to have a fluent communication with the Sales department. They are making an special effort; we have reduced the wrong prices but we still have.

I have suggested the Engineering Dpt. to assume the responsibility of maintaining the price configuration but they remark they have the expertise in the industrial matters but not in prices. I have offered to transfer human resources from the Sales Dpt. to the Engineering Dpt. but they refuse my suggestion.

I am thinking in creating a new department merging all the resources involved in the PCF but I am not sure because about the 80% of the knowledge for configuring (product features) is in the Engineering Dpt.

I have to take a decision but I would like to receive any advises or experiences from other companies.

Best regards,

ACACHO

We are a small company but use PCF extensively. All of the expertise and responsibility for maintaining PCF from BOMs to Pricing rests with one person (me! - in IT). We have written our pricing to be as flexible as possible but if there are any changes (except for bugs etc.) the rules are decided by a team usually involving senior managers, as pricing is so important to us.

We still do experience occasions when manufacturing introduce new features and do not tell me. However, the feature is not in PCF at all then - so in theory it cannot be selected and so there is not a pricing issue.

I think you are right to give the responsibility for modifying sales pricing to the same people who create the features (in your case, engineering). That does not mean they create the rules - they just make sure that implementing a new feature goes with consideration of the sales pricing. So they don't need expertise in setting prices - just coding them.

Hello Acacho,

I have implemented and supported the PCF as a consultant in many companies. It was always a dicussion, who is the responsible person to maintain the whole PCF. My opinion is that the engeneering department and the sales department has to work as a team. The department manager should explain the importance of the communication and the work hand in hand as a team. Further you should develop a kind of workflow for the processes of inserting and changing new features and new condition rules.

Hope, that this is helpful for you.
Best regards.

In my company we have the same problem. We have a workflow (corresponding to Dirk suggestions). But in my opinion the process is very slow and a lot of e-mails, papers and calls are issued. The main problem is that many times the sales dpt and the engineering dpt are not balanced in work charge: sometimes the engineering dpt. request the constrains to the sales dpt. but they are too busy and vice versa. At the end slowness. We are thinking in give all the responsibility to one of them according to Ed recommendations.

I also would appreciate more opinions. This topic is very interesting.

ASendo