Both automation and flexibility are vital in the context of engineering-to-order (ETO) SMEs located in high-cost environments, that have a production system tending towards one-of-a-kind production. The focus is placed on companies that are mainly using welding as their primary production operation. Thus, the concept of a product-model is proposed which congregates the design, engineering, and pre-production information about the product itself and the manufacturing system, in the context of steel welding industry. The necessary research and development are conducted through several design science cycles to ensure both the relevance of the proposed concept for the studied case company, and the rigor of the contribution to the knowledge base in the field. It is intended through the implementation of product-model based technologies to eliminate the need for manually conducted pre-production operations e.g., welding-robot programming, and radically reduce the time needed for pre-production operations.