How SMEs in mechanical and plant engineering-or mail-order/e-commerce retailers-can run end-to-end workflows from quote to cost accounting with sustainable variant management.
The challenge of variant manufacturing in the mid-market
Anyone working in mechanical and plant engineering knows the pattern: customer-specific orders, many options, tight deadlines-and an IT landscape that gets a bit more heterogeneous with every variant. In practice that means quote configuration in Excel, translation work between Sales and Engineering, and bills of materials full of question marks. TITAN – Manufacturing Industry ERP tackles exactly this. Not as yet another module, but as a continuous process from Sales, Purchasing, Production, Warehouse & Shipping through to Financial and Cost Accounting. The video sums up the journey in one line: master variance instead of merely managing it.
Sustainable variant management: product logic in the system
The linchpin is sustainable variant management. TITAN anchors product logic in the system, not in individual files. Formula attributes and rule-based, conditional attributes derive technical data from sales characteristics. This reduces errors, speeds up quoting, and ensures data arrives consistently in BOMs, routings, and prices. Sales sets as roles for variant parts keep the outward variety visible to customers while internal variety is brought under control. Companies report that their item master can be trimmed significantly-often by 50% or more.
CTO/ETO without system breaks
Why does this matter? Because variance here isn’t an exception-it’s the business model. Configure-to-Order (CTO) and Engineer-to-Order (ETO) thrive on choice-but every break between systems costs time and margin. TITAN links variant logic with operations: Production and Warehouse get reliable data, Shipping can plan with confidence, Quality is integrated. At the same time, Finance and Controlling see what variants cost and deliver, in near real time. The result is less spectacle and more calm in the system: clear handoffs, shorter lead times, better schedule adherence and cost reliability.
How daily work changes with TITAN ERP
The video makes the day-to-day impact clear. In Sales, a configuration-safe quote is created in minutes rather than days, with clean pricing and solid BOMs. Work preparation takes over without back-and-forth calls. In Production, rework becomes the exception because the data chain is sound. Warehouse & Shipping operate with realistic stock levels and dates. And at month-end, the numbers are no longer a project-they’re the outcome of a process that includes Financial and Cost Accounting from the start.
Modular platform: AppsWarehouse for SMEs
Technically, TITAN is built on AppsWarehouse-a toolkit that adds functional modules without losing the red thread. That’s crucial for SMEs: you can start where the bottleneck is (typically Quote → Configuration → Production) and then expand step by step. Today variant management, tomorrow detailed planning, the day after a transparent cost roll-up-no big bang, but a clear direction.
From practice
“Variance is part of mechanical engineering. What matters is keeping it manageable: fewer parts, cleaner data, and quotes that are right the first time,” says Hugo Raczka, Application Developer at classix Software GmbH.
A pragmatic start: three steps
The practical path looks like this: first, identify the bottleneck-where are you losing time or margin today? Second, move variant logic into the system-define formula and rule attributes, set up sales sets, clean up master data. Third, connect Finance early-so decisions about variants rest on solid numbers. This creates an operating point where variance doesn’t slow you down-it becomes a competitive advantage.
Conclusion and next step
If you want to see the next step, the video offers a compact tour of the entire chain-from inquiry to invoice. TITAN ERP shows that digital excellence doesn’t come from stand-alone modules but from a system that brings variants, data, and people together. For SMEs and variant manufacturers in mechanical and plant engineering, it’s less a leap in technology than a gain in organization-with measurable effects on speed, clarity, and margin.
Watch now: “TITAN -Manufacturing Industry ERP” (This video is also available in English on our English-language website)
