We are moving toward globalizing our material part numbers for all our sites. In order to keep from having to police new part entries at a high level we need to develop a part entry/look-up screen that our sites can use.
The idea is to have a Part Entry-like screen that has a handful of dropdowns. Based on these selections the module would develop a part number (ie. take the dimensions and the material type to make the part number). If that part already exists from a global listing it should give have a pop-up that says so. If the part does not yet exist it should pre-populate the part entry screen with the selected info. When the part entry is complete we need the part to be created in our centralized site and then propagated down to the other sites.
Process:
This could all be built on a customized version of the Part Entry screen. The part creation side of things could be built as a BPM or Function. This would copy the write data from the other sites and move it over to the centralized company and then push it down.
I have also been asked to look into potentially building out a configurator screen/process if it makes more sense to move that way.
What I Need
I need your opinions on the best way to implement this. Also, any documentation on Configurator build-outs/roll-outs would be greatly appreciated.
Sounds like a nice sized project, but seems fairly straight forward.
I don’t have an opinion on the approach just off the top of my head,
but I don’t see the pieces you need being too hard to implement in
Kinetic or Classic. A few functions or BAQs and some glue.
Been there done that, took a lot of work. It depends if you also want Centralized Engineering, Revisions to sync down or just Parts (which is basically Multi-Company).
As for standardization, most folks make an External App (with an ETL) or BPM Form to ask the User some questions and from those answers they form the Description and what type of Part.
Some use Incremental PartNums, some want Smart PartNums.
It will determine if its a Make Direct or Purchased Part, if its a Phantom, if its Qty Bearing, Backflush, Run MRP, TrackLots etc…
It depends on what you are building… but remember if a Part is a Finished Good and the Engineering Group has 20 Materials, 20 Sub-Assemblies (children parts) you need to cycle through all of those and sync them down too… Then if you are Multi-Site you need to worry about PartSite and Alt Methods too.
TLDR; Been there, its doable, its a fun project, but it will take some time!
We used an ETL because the Rebuilding all the Airplane Parts could take 3 hours… BOMs are huge. Sync REST wasnt an option, needed to be fire and forget, async.
