Engineer-to-order supply chain management: A literature review and research agenda

Product proliferation as a result of meeting ever increasing customer demand preferences is well documented. In addition, customisation has been promoted as a source of competitive advantage. Despite these factors, most of the published research in operations and supply chain management has neglected the needs of the ‘engineer-to-order’ (ETO) sector and there is no major systematic literature review for the ETO supply chain.

This paper presents a comprehensive literature review of published material relating to ETO supply chains. It contributes to the development of a more robust definition of the ETO supply chain, helps to identify strategies that are suitable and investigates the relationship of the ETO sector with lean and agile approaches.

The review also presents an analysis of research methods and industry sectors that emerge from the literature search. By analysing different streams of literature this paper helps to provide a foundation for thinking about engineer-to-order supply chain definitions and strategies and provides a research agenda to guide further study.