We had in place configurator ABC, revision A, which worked well. It created a smart part number based on options selected by the user. There are at least several hundred possible part numbers.
We configured a whole bunch of parts such as ABC01234, ABC11234, ABC21234, etc. All these were Rev A.
Then there was a change to the manufacturing process such that now we have a new configurator, ABC, revision B.
So now when we configure a new part – ABC31234, for example – it gets created as revision B, even though this is the first iteration of this part.
Is there any way to control the revision of the part so that it does not default to the same rev of the configurator? We would like the first version of a configurator to be Rev A, regardless of the revision of the configurator base part.
Is there a real need for first time configurations to be Rev A?
I’d think that by having a specific configurator design always apply the same rev, then you could easily tell if the configured part is using the latest configurator.
Say your configurator (Rev A) called out for painting a part. Then you decide it is better to subcontact that out, so you make Rev B of the configurator, which replaces the painting ops and materials with the sub-contract.
Now if you have parts in the system ABC123 (rev A), ABC321 (rev A) ABC231 (rev B), you know that the MOM for the first two would require you paint it in house.
A couple of more questions:
Are you creating the Part tabel and Rev entries? Or are these for Make to Order only?
If creating a Part and BOM, will you do any rev maintenance to an existing part? Say part ABC123 Rev A was created. You find an error in configurator, which made an error in the that part-rev’s BOM. After fixing the Configurator to now make Rev B parts, do you manually update Rev A to fix it?
Based on the amount of feedback from all over the organization, yes, I think we really want it to be Rev A, regardless of which configurator created the part.
Yes, these parts (and corresponding revs) get added to the part table and the revs can be maintained. But for being configured in the first place, they are treated like any other manufactured part.
When you are asking about manually updating Rev A, are you asking about the the part or the configurator? We changed the manufacturing process, so de-activated the Rev A configurator and began using the Rev B configurator for all newly-created parts. And for existing parts, we have been creating a Rev B with the new configurator. The no problem on those because the first version was rev A and now the second version, made with new manufacturing process, is rev B.
The confusion comes when a part is created for the very first time in the Rev B configurator (since that represents our current process). We do not want to have the first rev of a part be rev B; we want it to be rev A.
I did come up with a very convoluted process whereby we create a Rev A, load the details from Rev B into A, approve A and then delete B. Requires a bunch of extra steps, but does appear to work. Was just hoping for a more elegant solution.