The fierce competition in global manufacturing and the reshaping of supply chains have led to lower-than-expected growth in domestic demand and exports for China's manufacturing industry. At the same time, constantly changing consumer demands, such as a surge in personalized needs and shorter update cycles, pose new challenges for China's manufacturing industry. In this context, the traditional MTS (Make-To-Stock) manufacturing model is no longer suitable, and issues such as inventory risk and forecast risk have become a Sword of Damocles hanging over manufacturing enterprises.

　　Therefore, the MTO (Make-To-Order) manufacturing model is recognized and adopted by more domestic manufacturing enterprises due to its high response speed, low inventory characteristics, and flexible adaptation.

　　In the MTO model, an order can be considered an independent project, but manufacturing enterprises often face situations where multiple projects are carried out simultaneously, involving centralized management and coordinated management of multiple related projects, such as resource coordination between different projects, specific contents like human resources, materials, production time, and scheduling. This requires introducing a program (Program characteristics: multiple projects carried out simultaneously, multiple projects are related) management approach, which places higher demands on the production management of manufacturing enterprises.

　　The MTS model is equivalent to single-project management, where manufacturing enterprises manage production effortlessly with traditional ERP systems. However, when upgrading to the MTO production model and introducing the program management approach, facing increased product categories, large and frequent demand fluctuations, complex production processes, and an increase in temporary projects, traditional ERP systems cannot perfectly resolve conflict management and coordination for multiple projects, making it difficult to keep up with the program management approach. Since the old system is not easy to use, if enterprises wish to customize and develop a new system, they first face high initial development costs, and also continuous costs for added functionalities and daily maintenance, along with significant time consumption. Faced with this dilemma, manufacturing enterprises urgently need a suitable solution.

　　Magic Grid (MoFangWangBiao) provides a unique solution to meet the new needs of program management for manufacturing enterprises. Magic Grid is a configurable software platform that empowers users to flexibly build personalized usage scenarios and rapidly adjust them at any time based on market and enterprise changes. This platform is perfectly suited for multi-project coordination management in the MTO production model, comprehensively enhancing manufacturing enterprises' production delivery capabilities through digital power, controlling overall product quality, and building unique core competitiveness.

　　Advantages of the MTO Program Management System Based on Magic Grid

　　Flexible customization of order production plans and piece-rate rules: In MTO mode, multiple projects run in parallel, with different processes and raw material requirements. Enterprises can use the rich configuration modules built into Magic Grid to formulate suitable order plans, and also customize piece-rate rules to accurately reflect production costs and profits.

　　Flexible production processes, achieving process standardization and automation: Changes and additions of orders under the program management approach are difficult to predict. Magic Grid provides flexible production processes, allowing enterprises to conveniently plan and adjust production tasks at any time based on real-time order changes and continuously added orders. The modularity of the processes enables automatic adjustment of business workflows, while automatically reminding relevant personnel to ensure orderly production.

　　Real-time tracking of production progress and quality control: With multiple projects running in parallel, controlling production progress and product quality is particularly important. Through Magic Grid, manufacturing enterprise personnel can track order production progress in real-time, obtain product archives in real-time, ensuring on-time delivery of orders and guaranteeing the quality of ordered products.

　　Seamless integration with external systems, providing decision support and control capabilities: Program management is advanced management for enterprise senior executives to handle strategic projects and organizational multi-projects. With its industry-first "external field group" feature, Magic Grid can achieve seamless integration with other different external systems within the enterprise, empowering managers to control key information such as personnel, finance, materials, production, supply, and sales in real-time, while providing comprehensive statistical analysis and accurate data support for managers when making decisions.

　　Automated data analysis and raw material procurement forecasting: Under the MTO model, demand forecasting for manufacturing enterprises is difficult, requiring a certain production cycle, and occasionally some inventory. Magic Grid provides users with customizable material analysis reports, which production management personnel can view and use as needed. These reports can more intuitively and clearly display material changes at various stages, automatically generate procurement forecasts, and enable one-click submission of pre-purchase functions.

　　Years of persistent R&D and continuous improvement have enabled Magic Grid to acquire over 150,000+ loyal users, including many medium and large manufacturing enterprises both domestically and internationally. Let's see how they achieve production management through Magic Grid.

　　Huawei UAE Representative Office

　　Huawei UAE Representative Office used Magic Grid as a development platform to develop a program management system supporting the MTO production model, taking only one month from requirements to launch. The new system comprehensively incorporates management from base station surveying and design to material requirements, allowing for material consolidation based on base station orders to guide production and transportation plans. After launch, the UAE Representative Office continued to optimize the new system based on Magic Grid's flexible scalability, quickly making functional changes and additions according to actual conditions and needs, enabling the new system to fully support all project requirements. The use of the new system not only improved overall work efficiency but also enhanced managers' control over project progress. Simultaneously, the close connection between all stages accelerated project progress.

　　Huade Crane

　　Huade Crane is a professional manufacturer of non-standard European-style cranes, operating under a typical MTO production model where each order is a project, usually in a multi-project parallel mode. Huade Crane customized a system application that conforms to its entire workflow using Magic Grid. Through its unique integration capabilities, it synchronizes SAP data bidirectionally to the application, helping various departments track various data and process progress related to production, delivery, and installation in real-time, replacing Oracle P6 project management work. The use of the new system significantly improved work efficiency and enhanced managers' overall control over project progress, achieving close cooperation among various processes and accelerating the production process. After the system's launch, Huade continued to leverage Magic Grid's flexible scalability to continuously improve and expand functionalities to adapt to changing management needs at different stages of enterprise development, greatly supporting Huade's enterprise management innovation requirements.