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The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a product model that is created from the existing products of a small made‐to‐order furniture company.

The methodology is based on process mapping of the manufacturing of existing and catalogued products and transforming the process maps to operation flow diagrams. Analysis of the diagrams revealed the basis of a product model by sorting large number of parts into two object classes: carcasses and accessories. The production times of these parts were measured by time study methods and populated to a database of standard times. The product model was validated by aggregating the production times for products manufactured over a period and compared against the total available resources.

After validating and adjustments for abnormal circumstances, the product model formed the basis for the development of a production scheduling and control system that assisted the company to achieve 30 per cent productivity improvement.

Made‐to‐order businesses are generally small companies with a large number of product designs that are influenced by customers. Individual customisation of every production order makes it almost impossible to employ traditional standard times data for scheduling and capacity planning.

Since every order and product is different, production planning in a made‐to‐order manufacturing environment is often managed in an ad hoc fashion with little computerised scheduling support. The methodology described in this paper is a practical approach to develop a systematic process that can enable small companies to migrate to a computer aided manufacturing environment without substantial disruption to their normal business.