Fw: Product modeling when every product is custom

[Jürgen Reinold <of...@reinold.org>]

Thoughts? Anyone?

Thank you for your help in advance.

Jürgen


---------- Forwarded Message -----------
To: user@ofbiz.apache.org
Sent: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 15:52:50 -0500
Subject: Product modeling when every product is custom

I am trying to configure/modify OFBiz for our business. But I am having
difficulties modeling our products. Any pointers/suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.

Our products are similar to photo prints:

* Several standard sizes such as 4”x6”, 5”x7”, 12”x18”, …

* We allow custom sizes such as 4.123”x6.321” that are made from the next
bigger product (and priced accordingly)

* Except for square products, product orientation can be landscape or portrait

* Several material options such as matte, lustre, glossy finishes, ...

* Several manufacturing options such as sharp or rounded corners, ...

* Several bundle options such as just the print, the print ready for wall
mount, the print ready for desk display, …

And then there are a few unique aspects:

* Each of our products has a serial number that we need to track. Even if a
line item has a quantity of more than 1, each product will have a separate
serial number. In that case, communication with the customer such as order
confirmations should have only one entry/image per line item.

* In case we have to reprint a product (defects, color did not turn out
right), the replacement products need to be related to the originally ordered
ones, but should have new and separate serial numbers.

* We have regular production runs and would like to use the MFG functionality,
but our serialized products are never put into inventory. They ship out to our
customers right after they have been produced.

And then there are the product images. That is my biggest headache. We need to
associate a thumbnail of the customer supplied image with each product we
ship. Order related communication and order history needs to show the customer
supplied images for each product. We have URLs for these images and are
otherwise very flexible in generating and storing derived images.

Any suggestions to how this can be modeled with virtual products, product
variants, … would be greatly appreciated. I am not looking for complete
solutions, just broad strokes.

I assume we will have to implement a custom “make product from customer image”
service that combines predefined virtual/variant products with the customer
image and serial number so that OFBiz knows where to get the unique images for
each product.

Thank you for your help in advance and keep up the great work!

Jürgen