High-Tech Engineer-To-Order Manufacturing

About Photon Spot

Photon Spot is a bootstrapped, engineer-driven company that designs and manufactures cryogenic systems and photon detectors, two categories of highly specialized lab equipment used by physicists at universities, national laboratories, and private companies working at the forefront of quantum technology. Founded 16 years ago by Vikas Anant, the company has grown from a one-person operation into a tight-knit team of about eight people, nearly all of them engineers spanning mechanical, electrical, and manufacturing disciplines.

The cryogenic systems Photon Spot builds are remarkable in their complexity. A single unit can contain 500 to 600 individual parts organized across up to three layers of assembly hierarchy, with dozens of subassemblies feeding into a final product. Some of the company’s most intricate configurations involve as many as 66 subassemblies compiled into a single master bill of materials (BOM), making each build a significant engineering and logistics challenge.

Photon Spot operates as an Engineer-to-Order (ETO) manufacturer, meaning every unit is built to the customer’s exact specifications. Customers choose from a broad set of features and options, much like configuring a custom vehicle, and the resulting product is unique to that order. While many units share common subassemblies and components, no two finished systems are exactly alike. This ETO model demands extraordinary precision in planning, material procurement, and production sequencing, and it places unique requirements on the systems and tools the company relies on to manage its operations.

The company operates in the nascent but rapidly growing quantum technology space, an industry often compared to AI in terms of transformative potential. Photon Spot’s customers include leading research institutions and companies pushing the boundaries of quantum computing, quantum sensing, and related fields. As a bootstrapped business with no outside funding, the company has built its reputation entirely on engineering excellence and the quality of its products.

With a deeply interdisciplinary team handling everything from CAD design to final assembly, Photon Spot embodies the kind of small but highly capable manufacturer that thrives when equipped with the right tools and systems to manage complexity at scale.

The Challenge: Outgrowing Spreadsheets

In the early days, when Photon Spot was building only one or two systems a year, Excel spreadsheets and manual bills of materials were sufficient. But as volume grew and product complexity increased, the limitations of that approach became clear. The company adopted a basic inventory and purchase order program, but it could not reliably track materials across the growing number of projects and parts.

With multiple large projects running simultaneously, each involving hundreds of unique parts from dozens of vendors, managing materials without a unified system had become a serious bottleneck. A single missing part could stall an entire build. The company needed a system that could handle the complexity of deeply nested, customized assemblies while keeping inventory accurate and production on track.

“You have 10 different projects to do and there’s a thousand parts for each one. It’s impossible to manage.” - Vikas Anant, Founder

Why Cetec ERP

When Photon Spot began evaluating ERP systems, several factors shaped their decision. As a small, bootstrapped company, they needed a platform that was cost-effective and ready to use without a lengthy setup process. Many of the systems they evaluated fell short on that front, requiring significant configuration work just to handle basic manufacturing processes.

Cetec ERP was different. It delivered strong manufacturing, inventory, and accounting capabilities right out of the box, so Photon Spot could get up and running quickly. On top of that solid foundation, Cetec’s open API gave the team the option to build custom tools for their most specialized ETO workflows. It was this combination that set Cetec apart: a system that worked immediately, with the flexibility to grow alongside the business.

“It did most of what we wanted it to do. The ability to DIY and have API access to things was probably one of the biggest draws.” - Vikas Anant, Founder

Implementation: Going All In

Photon Spot took a thorough, hands-on approach to implementation. After completing a 30-day free trial, they signed on and spent a couple of months configuring the system before going live. In a move that Vikas considers a smart decision in hindsight, they adopted Cetec’s accounting module from day one, giving them a fully integrated platform from the start.

“We kind of went all in. We went with the accounting as well, and that ended up being a good idea.” - Vikas Anant, Founder

Cetec ERP’s training program, UniversitERP, played a key role during onboarding. The training classes and sandbox environments gave the team the space to experiment with different BOM structures and workflows, helping them learn the system quickly and build confidence before going live.

With Cetec’s structure as a guide, Photon Spot redesigned their BOM hierarchy to align engineering design with manufacturing execution. They restructured how they organized their CAD models, ensured every field was properly populated, and built a clear production flow. The result was a system where engineering and production finally spoke the same language.

On the team adoption side, employees who had been with the company long enough to experience the pain of managing complex builds with spreadsheets embraced the new system immediately. One long-time team member saw Cetec ERP as a major step forward from day one.

“Our longest-tenured team member had felt the pain of managing everything manually. When we brought Cetec in, he thought it was great.” - Vikas Anant, Founder

Extending Cetec ERP: A Custom Product Configurator

One of the most powerful aspects of Cetec ERP is its open API, and Photon Spot has taken full advantage of it. Using Cetec ERP as their foundation, the team built a custom product configurator that streamlines the entire process from customer order to production-ready data.

The company restructured their entire BOM architecture to be modular within Cetec. When a customer requests a system, they select from a defined set of options. The configurator then assembles the appropriate BOMs, checks whether all required parts exist in Cetec’s inventory, builds a nested BOM structure (BOMs within BOMs), and uploads the entire package through the Cetec API. Their SolidWorks workflow feeds directly into this pipeline, with CSV exports compiled and formatted for Cetec automatically.

The team also built a custom traveler system on top of Cetec ERP. The traveler ties directly to Cetec ERP work orders and provides a step-by-step sequential build guide that production staff follow on the floor, completing each work order as they go. This gives the team a production workflow perfectly matched to how they build their complex cryogenic systems, all driven by data living inside Cetec ERP.

Beyond the configurator and travelers, Photon Spot has also built custom label generation with QR codes and streamlined receiving workflows, all powered by the Cetec API. Each of these tools extends Cetec’s core capabilities into the specific areas where Photon Spot’s operation is most specialized.

Results

After nearly three years on Cetec ERP, the system has become the operational backbone of Photon Spot, transforming how the company manages its complex Engineer-to-Order production.

Inventory management has been the single biggest improvement. With hundreds of parts from dozens of vendors flowing through the system, Cetec gives the team accurate, real-time visibility into what is on hand, what has been ordered, and what is needed. The production stalls that previously plagued the company have been eliminated.

“The biggest problem with building these big assemblies is if you’re missing one part, you’re stalled. I would say inventory management has been probably the biggest improvement.” - Vikas Anant, Founder

A production-first mindset has taken hold across the organization. Cetec has changed how the team thinks about their work, shifting from a design-first mentality to one that considers manufacturing processes, material availability, and build sequencing from the outset.

Full team adoption is now in place, with the entire team actively using the system every day. Cetec ERP has become the central hub for how Photon Spot plans, tracks, and executes its complex builds.

A platform for innovation, powered by Cetec’s open API, has allowed Photon Spot to build custom tools that extend the system into every corner of their operation. The product configurator, sequential travelers, and QR code label system are all examples of what becomes possible when an ERP platform is designed to be built upon.

Conclusion

Photon Spot represents a compelling example of what a technically capable, engineer-driven company can achieve with the right ERP platform. By combining Cetec’s core manufacturing, inventory, and accounting capabilities with custom-built integrations powered by the Cetec API, they have created a system perfectly tailored to the demands of high-complexity, Engineer-to-Order production.

For a bootstrapped company building some of the most advanced lab equipment in the quantum space, Cetec ERP has provided the foundation to manage complexity, maintain accuracy, and keep growing. It is both the operating system for their business and the platform their team continues to build on.

“Cetec has been transformative for our company. It changed how we think about production.” - Vikas Anant, Founder, Photon Spot