In the make-to-order production approach, manufacturing of the product starts only after receiving a customer order.

Customer orders drive the activities for component manufacturing, their assembly into products, and the delivery of products.

Typically, make-to-order is used for highly configured products, which are built according to specific customers' requests and cannot be easily resold to a different one, or for products, where holding inventories is very expensive.

Due to the necessity to balance complex products and differently organized manufacturing tasks, the scheduling of make-to-order production is usually performed by using an advanced production scheduling approach. The scheduling objective is ensuring that all customer orders can be fulfilled in the required quantity and on the desired dates, therefore it must be performed on an individual order basis.

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APICS

A production environment where a good or service can be made after receipt of a customer s order. The final product is usually a combination of standard items and items custom- designed to meet the special needs of the customer. Where options or accessories are stocked before customer orders arrive, the term assemble-to-order is frequently used. Syn: produce-to-order.