In this article conclusions from nearly 10 years of collaboration with Polish and German Engineer-to-Order (ETO) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from mechanical sector was presented. Research objective was to highlight common organizational problems they are dealing with, which prevent them from transition to Mass Customizers. As a result, a concept of 5 foundations for robust process design was proposed: procedures, product selection, machining philosophy, planning and storage, cross-functional teams. More practical solutions from this field have to be published to fill the research gap.

Along with changes in customer expectations, the process of ordering a house, especially one built with the most modern technology from prefabricated HQ 40-foot shipping containers, should take place in an atmosphere of free-flowing, customer-friendly conversation. Therefore, it is important that the company producing such a solution has a tool supporting such offers and orders when producing personalized solutions. This article provides an original approach to the automatic processing of orders based on an example of orders for residential shipping containers, natural language processing and so-called premises developed. Our solution overcomes the usage of records of the conversations between the customer and the retailer, in order to precisely predict the variant required for the house ordered, also when providing optimal house recommendations and when supporting manufacturers throughout product design and production. The newly proposed approach examines such recorded conversations in the sale of residential shipping containers and the rationale developed, and then offers the automatic placement of an order. Moreover, the practical significance of the solution, thus proposed, was emphasized thanks to verification by a real residential ship container manufacturing company in Poland.