PLM for Manufacturing

Define your own workflow to manage the implementation of manufacturing changes.

• Establish a sequence of steps that should be taken for every type of change. 

• Use checklists to ensure that every piece of the change is made. 

• Define roles and responsibilities to create ownership and accountability by all team members involved. 

• Monitor the change status dashboard for greater visibility. 

Make sure that your team properly plans for all released ECOs. 

• Generate an MCO when a new product design is released or changes are requested from the shop floor. 

• Initiate a workflow to review and update process plans to account for requested changes.  

• Assign and view project queues for a team or individual.

Reconcile the mBOM directly against the new eBOM and reconfigure to meet manufacturing requirements.

• Generate a side-by-side comparison of the new eBOM and the current mBOM. 

• View color-coded flags that highlight the differences between the BOMs. 

• Automatically determine items that are new to the system or new to the BOM. 

• Identify the last usage of an item to plan for inventory changeovers.

• Set effectivity dates, adjust quantities, and split items across operation sequence numbers. 

Quickly identify process routing and work instruction changes driven by mBOM updates.

• Activities within process routings consume items from the mBOM. 

• Quickly search process library to compare and find differences between the mBOM and routing. 

• Drag and drop items into the routing using a workbench that reconciles the routing to the mBOM.

• Moving tasks or rebalancing the line moves the consumed item within the routing to the new station or operator. 

• Apply revision changes based on ECOs to all impacted activities.

• Set effectivity dates and applicable models and options to control the implementation of ECOs. 

• Read our blog to learn more about how Consumption Workbench works.

The concept of models and options is an integral part of Proplanner's solutions because Models and Options are an integral part of the production of complex assembly products. Models typically represent high-level types of products (sometimes referred to as families), while options represent features applied to those models to allow for further variation and customization.

Though this concept is similar for sales configuration solutions that control which model and option combinations are feasible from the order and sales perspective, the purpose behind the use of models and options in process configuration is very different.  

Different product models and options require different assembly processes. Some processes, or tasks, may be performed on multiple models and/or options, while other tasks may be unique to just one or two models and/or options. 

In Assembly Planner, this means one process routing instead of hundreds.

• Maintain a single process routing that can be filtered by model and option rules at the time of use inline balancing analysis, work instruction generation, part delivery plans, etc. 

• Leverage common assembly tasks; write each task once and map to all model(s) and/or option(s) that require it instead of writing and updating the same task in multiple documents.

Proplanner has extensive standard and custom reporting options.  While Proplanner offers services to provide client-specific reporting and data exports, many clients are able to implement their own reports using our standard API's and recent integrations to applications such as Power BI and Tableau.

One of our key data models is available in the open-format XML-based Scenario files, which is used extensively by the Assembly Planner application to share and store Line Balancing alternatives.  This export contains detailed information on tasks, stations, variants (Models/Options), tools, components (3PR = Products, Processes, Plants and Resources).

Check out our enhanced mBOM export module here.

Proplanner PDM/PLM and ERP integrations can be handled via our extensive SQL-View, XML, or Web Service APIs.  In the diagram (above) Proplanner data flows are shown between our PLM/MPM solution (Assembly Planner) and our MES solution (Shop Floor Viewer/MES) in coordination with a traditional ERP integration approach.

ERP Integration: Proplanner's API can support reading and writing both mBOM, Routing (BOP), and Order Build List data to and from all popular ERP systems such as Oracle, JD Edwards, SAP, and Mapics/Infor. Typically our ERP integrations involve reading the Order Build List and writing out the mBOM and BOP Routing which manufacturing engineers author within Assembly Planner.

The mBOM can be sent to ERP for a particular order configuration or as a collection of assemblies at specific versions and effectivity dates that correspond to change orders (either manufacturing or engineering initiated). In this way, Assembly Planner can reconcile and validate that BOTH the mBOM, and BOP Routing are reconciled to ensure that all process steps actually consume all components of the mBOM.

The BOP Routing is typically exported at the Assembly Planner Operation or Station level of detail, which indicates the aggregated task times and component lists consumed on a station by station basis.

PDM Integration: Proplanner's API can support reading CAD Model and Engineering Change Order data from any popular system such as Windchill, Teamcenter, and Enovia. This import includes graphical models but also the product structure and meta-data such as part numbers, revisions, descriptions, as well as Engineering Change attributes which specify added, removed, and replaced components with their respective quantities. 

Proplanner has performed over 100 of these PDM and ERP integrations and most can be accomplished with the standard API available to all users and Systems Integrators.