Breaking new ground in interactive configuration of production environments by the use of intelligent computer tool

In the face of an increasing demand for tailor-made and highly customized products, the design and development of its production systems became a very important task and critical success factor. Especially because production systems themselves are highly customized and exceedingly tailored to the specific demands of the end product manufacturers and their specific products. This paper presents two different solutions of how the mechanical engineering industry can use configuration tools to assist its distribution staff in the sale sprocess. The main support for the technical salesmen is in having the possibility to present the future production system to their customers in a very realistic way. By that they are not any longer forced to convince their customers by columns and arrays of numbers or long part lists and static drawings of the production system. The presented computer tools offer the distribution staff a totally new quality of abilities in presenting the results of the joint design process with their customers. At the end of that joint meeting the customer can see "his" future production system in an operating and running state on screen or projection. Additionally he gets qualified and highly descriptive charts and figures for the evaluation of the production systems preformance.