Unity Material ID Order

There has been a long standing problem with Unity in that it orders the first material in order of how the mesh is built in Max etc. The first face number is assigned the first material and so on.
The fix is to detach all faces according to material ID and then reattach them in order back into the existing named mesh.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/multi-material-id.27738/

I'm just wondering as they closed that thread, if there was any further research gone on towards a way of getting round this. I have 200 heads to redo and I'm not relishing the thought of having to do it (apart from writing a maxscript to do it).