I love it! Finally some insight!
I agree with you also. Believe it or not we are a bespoke seat manufacturer as well. Unfortunately, I cannot give you name of the company without impeding my own safety. But the scale should give you an idea of how big we really are. On our site currently we employ 4000 associates across 3 single shifts. By associates I mean operators.
We have a Bespoke department which is split into 3 other sub department levels. These departments handle nearly 17000 unique part levels a year. And normally they won’t touch the same part twice 😧. According to the BOM analyst on site the procurement of parts is purely down to the specification of the customer, which means versatility is key. We understand that at the level of bespoke or unique parts used it is imperative that we give accurate build data and build times to the customer. The affluent market we target is probably the same market that PCS sell their pc’s at the £5000 market.
Parts and build processes can always be refined based upon doing simple 5Y exercises to eliminate any waste or complications.
Maybe this is something that PCS are currently doing.
I'm an MRP controller believe it or not 😂 (not sure what the equivalent role would be, I've gone through so many title changes)
So, to quickly summarise. I believe PCS operate exactly the same way as your bespoke department will. The crux of the matter this "weather" is that the one part that every customer wants is on an unknown leadtime, with unknown delivery schedule, and an unknown quantity dispatched...... literally..... and all they are getting from the supplier is, my guess, if's and but's. Couple in with that a suggested NDA where you cannot talk about any of the stock levels received/confirmed/committed and it makes it a very foggy environment.
Save for that particular host of unknowns (Nvidia cards), the rest can be reasonably managed and estimated reasonably. The system does work, genuinely. Initially Covid kicked it right square in the proverbial but the team bounced back and then got absolutely slammed with the Nvidia *cough* launch.