The automotive industry is unique as not only it has challenges associated with B2C, such as focus groups and consumers driving the demand, but it also has all the challenges that other B2B manufacturing companies would have. The automotive industry is also fairly unique with faster cycle and lead times, which drives the need for instant availability of parts in the JIT fashion and reduces the BOM complexities. But since you have so many stakeholders, and vendors involved in supplying parts, even a minor change in product assembly could impact the whole ecosystem, including OEMs and suppliers.In today's episode, we have our guest, Melissa Drew, who discusses the product life cycle of automotive products and how it is different from other industries. She also discusses the difference between manufacturing, engineering, configurable BOMs, and their nuances in the automotive industry. Finally, she has had a chance to touch on the importance of focus groups and how that drives the entire engineering and manufacturing process and tool selection and adoption for automotive companies.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.