Industry focus

Project management in custom machine building

Every special-purpose machine is engineered once, for one customer. Design, manufacturing, assembly, and commissioning depend on each other in a fixed sequence – and share the same specialists across several orders at once.

Deep hole drilling on a vertical machining centre: the drill in the workpiece, chips on the tilting table.

In brief

Custom machine building means one-off engineering: every machine is designed once, for one customer. What is individual about it is the component level. The sequence above it repeats from order to order – sales, development, design, purchasing, manufacturing, assembly, commissioning – and at that activity level, planning differs little from the rest of mechanical and plant engineering. The phases depend on each other as a fixed chain, and the same design engineers, production specialists, and fitters work on several customer orders at once. Linetrack maps dates and capacity in one shared data set, so a delay in the design phase of one order becomes visible before it puts the assembly date of another at risk.

4000 +

completed
industrial projects

270 +

parallel projects
at one customer

1512 +

projects under
parallel control

10

working days to the
first self-planned project

*Full survey of all productive Linetrack implementations across every industry, as of August 2026. No separate figures exist for custom machine building on its own – these numbers document the platform, not this segment.

The reality in custom machine building

What custom machine building demands of planning

A special-purpose machine is built once, not a hundred times. That changes what project planning has to deliver. Four patterns that recur throughout custom machine building.

No two projects are alike

What is new in every order is the component level: which assemblies are built, which special parts are bought in, and what depends on what. The sequence above it repeats. A template therefore carries down to a certain depth, and no further.

Design, manufacturing, assembly, and commissioning form a chain

Each phase builds on the one before it. If design slips, the start of manufacturing shifts with it – and assembly and commissioning follow.

The same specialists work across several orders

Design engineers, production specialists, and fitters are scheduled across several parallel customer orders at once. Who is free for which order, and when, is hard to read from individual order plans alone.

A delay can reach into another order

If one customer order ties up design longer than planned, that same capacity is missing for the next order. Without a cross-project view, that only becomes visible once the assembly slot is already at risk.

The most common objection

“Too individual for a system” – depends on the level

Custom machine builders often see themselves as a manufactory: every machine a one-off, every project different. For many, the conclusion is that none of it can be mapped in a planning system. At component level, that holds. At the level above it, where planning actually happens, it does not.

Activity level. Sales, development, design, purchasing, manufacturing, assembly, commissioning: this chain is in almost every order, and in the same sequence. Set the project plan up at this level and planning in custom machine building looks much like planning in plant engineering. A standard plan carries here.

Component level. Which assemblies are built, which special parts are bought in, and what depends on what is different in every project. This is where planning genuinely gets laborious. For a reliable start, though, you do not need to go that deep.

The principle. Plan as precisely as necessary, not as precisely as possible. Planning depth is a decision: every additional level costs upkeep and only pays off once dates or capacity would otherwise not hold. In practice you start at activity level and go deeper only where it hurts.

Krüger & Salecker started exactly that way: a pattern that already existed in-house became the standard project plan, split into elements with one responsible department each. New projects have been created from it ever since. Set out in the Krüger & Salecker case study.

Activity levelthe same in almost every order

Sales
Development
Design
Purchasing
Manufacturing
Assembly
Commissioning

Component leveldifferent in every order

Assemblies, special parts, bought-in components – different in every order

A custom machine project from quotation to commissioning

Across the entire lifecycle – every phase with its dates, resources, and dependencies in one system.

This is the activity level from the section above, written out. A custom machine project runs through these seven phases from quotation to commissioning at the customer's site. Every phase has its own dates, ties up its own resources, and depends on the one before it: if technical clarification in sales drags on, development starts later and everything behind it shifts with it.

This is exactly where separate tools fall short. They map individual phases, but not the continuous flow. In Linetrack the entire project lifecycle sits in one system, with every dependency between the phases. So it is visible at any time how a late special part affects assembly and commissioning, and which specialists are needed when.

SalesEnquiry, technical clarification, and a quotation with rough dates

DevelopmentConcept and system design, before detailed engineering starts

DesignDetailed design of the assemblies through to release for manufacturing

PurchasingSpecial parts and bought-in components with their own lead times in the plan

ManufacturingIn-house production with machine loading and capacity control

AssemblyMechanical and electrical assembly, across trades

CommissioningRunning in at the customer's site through to documented acceptance

The way out of Excel chaos

One data foundation for
all projects, departments, and resources

The solution is not another Excel list, and not an ERP extension either. The ERP knows what has happened – not what happens if an order is accepted tomorrow. One-off engineering needs its own forward-looking view.

Forecast planning in sales: check promised dates against real utilisation before they are promised

Cross-project capacity view: see which customer order is currently tying up the design engineers – and where capacity is free

Every department in one system: from quotation to commissioning, without keeping three sets of lists

Suppliers and outsourced work visible in the plan – in custom machine building the bought-in part is often a one-off itself

Simulate scenarios instead of debating them: calculate the best response to a delay or a breakdown

For the first time, management, project leads, and departments have full visibility of what is happening where – without endlessly maintaining lists. And they can decide: on new enquiries as well as on incidents in a running order. What such a switch looks like in practice is set out in the MSG Solutions case study – the custom machine builder from Schmallenberg replaced a PM system the departments never got into, and now plans across departments in the same system. At Krüger & Salecker, the work breakdown structure sits in Linetrack: each department maintains its own element, and the overall status follows from that instead of from a round of enquiries.

Excel design

Excel assembly

MS Project

One data foundation for all projects

Sales

Project management

Departments

Employees

In practice

What custom machine builders achieve with Linetrack

The benefit shows up where Excel lists and gut feeling used to rule. In practice, status meetings halve: the current state is in the system at any time instead of being collected weekly from scattered lists.

Because bottlenecks and delays become visible earlier, the ability to react to disruptions rises noticeably. With one-off engineering that counts double: a late special part cannot be replaced from stock, so the response has to run through the plan.

The most important effect cannot be expressed in a single figure: management, project leads, and departments have full visibility of what is happening where for the first time – and can decide, on new orders as well as on incidents in ongoing work.

−50 %

status meetings

+25 %

faster response to disruptions

−5 %

project costs through less outsourcing

100 %

visibility instead of gut feeling

Customer experience

What our customers in custom machine building say

There is a full story behind both of these voices: the Krüger & Salecker case study – the forming machine builder from Bad Schwartau has tracked and managed its project data in one place ever since.

MSG Solutions uses Linetrack in project management and across departments to plan and steer projects efficiently. The system has completely replaced our old PM tool and now serves as the central platform for scheduling and resource planning.

Thanks to a shared data foundation, we always have a clear overview of the status of all projects and save significant time on portfolio analysis. The workflows are ideally matched to the requirements of mechanical and plant engineering – planning and decisions can be made in a practical, well-founded way as a result.

We especially appreciate the support: the Linetrack team responds quickly, is flexible with further development, and trains our staff in a hands-on way tailored to our processes. You can tell that real mechanical engineering experience goes into it.

Matthias Kramer

Managing Partner

MSG Solutions GmbH

"As a mechanical engineering company, we always struggled to track and manage project data efficiently. With Linetrack we've not only brought transparency into our projects but also significantly increased our productivity.

What impressed us most was the user-friendliness and the way the data is presented, which let us always keep everything in view.

I can recommend Linetrack to other companies without reservation. It's easy to use, highly efficient, and has genuinely simplified our business.

Many thanks to the Linetrack team for a great solution and excellent support!"

Tammo Bettex

Managing Director

Krüger & Salecker Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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What makes custom machine building structurally different from series machine building, for planning?

In series machine building, a plan developed once can be reused across many identical or similar machines, right down to the individual component. In custom machine building, reuse stops one level higher: the phase chain from sales to commissioning repeats, while the components below it are created anew with every customer order. For planning, that means a standard plan at activity level, and below it a constantly current, cross-project view of the shared specialists.

Are there reference customers specifically in custom machine building?

Yes, two with their own case study. MSG Solutions has built special-purpose machines for bar and tube processing since 1998, from the single machine to the linked production line. Krüger & Salecker builds forming machines and complete lines for the food, pharmaceutical, and petfood industries and was the first Linetrack customer in 2023. The full list is on the Referenzen page.

How are suppliers for special parts integrated?

External suppliers get structured access to their own tasks and dates directly inside the project plan. If a special part is delayed, the effect on downstream assembly and commissioning dates is visible immediately, instead of surfacing only through an email chain. Details are covered on the page about supplier integration.

Is Linetrack suitable for one-off builds with a short lead time?

In principle, yes – rollout does not depend on order length: the median time to the first self-planned project is ten working days. For very short lead times, adoption pays off most when several such orders run in parallel and share specialists – for a single short order with no parallel projects, the benefit of a portfolio view stays limited.

How does a delay in one customer order affect another?

The same design engineers, production specialists, or fitters are often scheduled across several customer orders at once. If one order ties up design longer than planned, that same capacity is missing on a parallel order – visible in the capacity histogram across all projects, not only once the assembly date is already at risk. How this cross-project view is built is covered on the page about schedule and capacity planning.

Does Linetrack replace design planning in CAD or PLM?

No. Design data, bills of materials, and drawings stay in your existing CAD and PLM systems. Linetrack plans the schedules, capacity, and dependencies around the design work – from quotation engineering through manufacturing and assembly to commissioning – without replacing the design tool itself.

Are custom machine projects too individual for project management software?

At component level every project is a one-off, that much is true. Planning happens one level above it, though, and that level looks the same in almost every order: sales, development, design, purchasing, manufacturing, assembly, commissioning. At this activity level, planning in custom machine building differs little from planning in the rest of mechanical and plant engineering, and a standard plan can be reused.

How detailed does a project plan in custom machine building have to be?

As precise as necessary. For a start, the activity level is enough – the phase chain from sales to commissioning. The component level below it is different in every project and costs upkeep accordingly. It pays off where dates or capacity would otherwise not hold, not across the board.

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