ERP configurators that automate 90% of custom orders.
Custom orders used to be built by hand in the ERP, the company's order system: a product engineer added each operation and material to the job and worked out the time and quantity for each. Configurators, which hold the rules that turn a customer's choices into a valid order, now handle about 90% of them. An AI tool builds each new configurator from a filled-in form.
Every custom order and every new product was built by hand.
Configurator designer
Repeat for every other input, rule and material…
- Width, Height
- Finish, Hardware, Handing
- Every other input
- Page layout
- Rules
- Dropdown lists
- Material rules
From a form to an import.
Product engineers already fill in an intake document: the inputs, dropdown options and part number structure, plus the operations and materials. The tool reads it and drafts the configurator.
One run also produces the manufacturing steps and parts list for each assembly. Rules written in plain words, such as part number conditions and quantity formulas, are translated into the code the configurator runs.
The AI sits outside the ERP. It writes a spec, ordinary code builds the files Epicor imports, and a check runs on every cross-reference before anything reaches production.
Under the hood Stack and build
The configurators started as rules that lived in a few experts' heads: valid options, dependencies, and the time and quantity calculations. They are now explicit and maintainable, written as custom code inside the order flow, so a valid configuration goes straight to a correctly structured manufacturing order.
The hard part of the tool is knowing what makes an imported configurator work. It reads a reference of about 2,000 lines of format rules and known Epicor gotchas before it writes anything, backed by 1,750 lines of code that build and validate the output. Every failure found in a real import is written back as a rule, and an audit step re-checks existing specs against the current version.
The model drafts the spec only. IDs, formatting, and the dozens of fields per row are generated by code.