In ETO, every order triggers a custom engineering project — high effort, long lead times. In CTO, orders are configured from pre-engineered modules — shorter lead times, lower cost, predictable margins. Modular5 guides you from one to the other without losing the ability to offer real customization.

If you build complex products in low-to-medium volumes, face engineering bottlenecks, and lose deals to long lead times — yes. If you build truly one-of-a-kind systems where every order is fundamentally different, the picture is more nuanced. Our four-week Scan tells you whether the business case stands up before you commit to anything.

We hear this from almost every client we work with. In nearly every case there’s significant modularization potential hiding under the surface. The Scan tells you where it makes sense and where it doesn’t — Engineer-to-Order remains a valid mode for the truly unique 10%.

A modularization journey is an investment, not a fixed fee. We start with a four-week Scan (fixed scope, fixed price) to determine the business case. Pilots typically run two months, full portfolio rollouts six to twelve months. By splitting strategic work in the Netherlands from execution in our India team, we keep the total cost competitive.

Sometimes. Modularization frees engineers from repetitive order-engineering and lets them focus on innovation — which most senior engineers appreciate once they see it in practice. We address resistance directly through cross-functional workshops and learning-by-doing, before any structural change lands.

Smart Customization is our core philosophy: offer customers exactly the variation that adds value to them, and standardize ruthlessly everywhere else. The opposite of mass customization (which often becomes mass complexity), Smart Customization keeps custom work tightly contained to the late stage where it actually matters.

Most consultancies stop at strategy and PowerPoints. We do both the thinking — architecture, principles, roadmap, done in the Netherlands with you — and the doing — CAD work, classification, master models, executed by our dedicated team in India. Strategy without execution is just a hallucination.

Moving from ETO to CTO requires a few clearly defined roles and responsibilities:

• Product, System and Module owners: responsible for the modular structure and the content of the different parts of the portfolio.
• Configuration owner: guards the logic and coherence inside the product configurator.
• Product Manager: the crucial link — the “referee” between commercial (market demand) and engineering (the technical detail). The product manager keeps the balance between what the market wants and what’s modularly feasible.
• Commercial Manager / Director: determines market demand (what the market asks, not just one specific customer) and manages the sales BOM.
• Product Change Manager and Change Board: essential for release management. They make sure changes are rolled out in a structured way across all systems (CAD, ERP, configurator).
• Management: the move to CTO has to be carried and steered from the top, because it fundamentally changes the company’s “rules of the game”.

In smaller SMEs these don’t have to be separate job titles, but the roles do need to be clearly assigned to the right people — otherwise the process stalls.

No. We’re vendor-agnostic — we work with whichever CPQ, PLM, and ERP systems fit your situation best. What we bring is the modular architecture and data model that makes those systems actually deliver value.

First measurable impact appears within six months, after a pilot. A full portfolio rollout typically runs 12–18 months. Connecting individual machines into configurable production lines is usually a year-two ambition. We never push for big-bang transformations — adoption beats speed.

There’s no fixed formula — it’s a constant trade-off and a compromise between departments. But there are clear guidelines and pitfalls.

1. Balance between variation and maintenance

• When to make it smaller: if too many unique variants or options land on one module, the model gets too complex. Then it’s wise to push the module “a layer down” and make it smaller.
• The danger of modules that are too small: tiny “LEGO bricks” drive up the maintenance load enormously. You get technical perfection, but the solution becomes too expensive and unmanageable.

2. Different perspectives within the organization

• Sales: wants modules as large as possible (e.g. just a “front” and a “back” of a machine) for easy quoting.
• Engineering: wants to avoid complexity. Left to engineering alone, modules tend toward small, technically perfect blocks — which makes the solution costly.
• Service: looks at replaceability. They might want a motor as its own module, because that makes overhauling or swapping in the field easier.
• Production: looks at the interface and how easily modules can be assembled.

3. Strategic factors

• Function: what specific task does the module need to perform?
• Interface: which fixed connection points are defined? This determines where a module starts and ends.
• Market demand: how many of the 1,000 possible market questions can you capture in, say, just five to seven smart modules?

In short: get a cross-section of every department at the table to decide together what size works best for sales, production and service alike.

Yes. Our 3-day Modular Design training (max 12 participants) gives engineers and product managers hands-on capability using your own products as case material. A 1-day management variant helps leadership understand and steer the transformation.