EC Part Lifecycle

The EC Part lifecycle defines the process for creating, reviewing and releasing parts. The Designer or Senior Designer has the ability to create new parts with the Development Part policy or the EC Part policy.

See Development Part Lifecycle.

The part is processed by moving it through the states in its lifecycle. For example, in the first state, the part object is created and connected to an ECO and drawing print. An Engineering Bill of Material is also created and connected to the part, specifying how it is to be created. The owner of the part then promotes it to the next state to send it to internal reviewers. When the review process is complete, it is promoted to the Release state. Only the owner or co-owner of a part can change its state.

If the part is in a route, the route may be set up to prevent the part from being promoted until the route is complete.

The EC Part lifecycle includes these states:

Preliminary

New parts and new part revisions are created in the Preliminary state. A part may have its name automatically generated or calculated by the user and given to the system. In either case the Create Part or Revise Part pages are used to generate the part and connect it to the appropriate ECO and drawing print objects.

Once a part is created, the Bill of Material page is used to build its Bill of Material, a comprehensive definition of materials (and their effectivity dates) required to manufacture the product. The user can also copy another part's Bill of Material by using the Copy EBOM command link. Drawing print objects are created and attached to the part as required during this step in the process.

Once the owner of the part has completed building the Bill of Material and connecting the appropriate drawing prints, the owner promotes the object to the Review state.

Because of the following checks, the user is required to promote the part from the bottom up. That is, the drawing prints must be promoted before their respective parts and the components must be promoted before their respective assemblies.

As the Part leaves the Preliminary state, the following Checks are fired:


  • All Component Parts attached via the EBOM relationship ("From" direction) must be at or beyond the Review state.
  • All drawings attached via the Part Specification relationship must be at or beyond the Review state.
  • The part must be connected to an ECO via the ECO New Part Revision relationship.
  • All earlier revisions of this part must be at or beyond the Release state.
  • All Component Parts attached via the EBOM relationship ("From" direction) must be the Latest Released Revision of that Part Name.
  • At least one Part Specification connection must exist regardless of the object type related. The object type can be a drawing print, CAD model, CAD drawing or any other type added to the Part Specification relationship.
  • The related document must have at least one file checked in.
  • At least one Design Responsibility connection must exist regardless of the object type related. Design Responsibility can be assigned only to organizations (subsidiaries, business units, or departments) within the host company.

If all of these Checks pass, the Part will be promoted to the next state.

Review

The part is reviewed and approved in this state by the Responsible Manufacturing Engineer using the ECO Properties page. The review should include the parts attributes, Bill of Material, and drawing print.

The Responsible Manufacturing Engineer makes adjustments to attributes like Effectivity and Estimated Cost as necessary. The permissions in this state do not allow any relationships below this part to be made or broken.

Once the Responsible Manufacturing Engineer is satisfied that the part can be manufactured consistent with its intent, s/he promotes it to the Release state.

Because of the following checks, the user is required to promote the parts from the bottom up.

As the Part leaves the Review state, the following checks are fired:


  • All Component Parts attached via the EBOM relationship ("From" direction) must be at or beyond the Release state.
  • All Drawings attached via the Part Specification relationship must be at or beyond the Release state.
  • If there are one or more manufacturer equivalent parts connected, at least one must be in the Release state.

If these checks pass, the part will be promoted to the next state.

Approved

After the part enters the Approved state, all affected items connected to the part's ECO are checked to see if they are also in the Approved state. If all affected items are in the Approved state, the ECO is automatically promoted to the Review state. If any single affected item connected to the ECO is in a state prior to Approved, the ECO is not promoted to the Review state.

A trigger is available (but is inactive, by default) to block ECO affected items from being promoted to the Release state unless the connected ECO is already in the Release state.

If a part has equivalent parts connected to it, one or more of the equivalent parts must be in the Release state before this part can be promoted to Release.

Release

As a Part enters the Release state, the following actions fire:


  • If the EBOM connection is from the highest release of a part, the following steps are performed:
  • An identical EBOM History relationship is created between the parts. This connection has all the same attribute values as the EBOM connection.
  • The End Effectivity Date is set on the EBOM History connection is set to (the date the component part is released - 1 second).
  • The EBOM connection is floated to the newly released component part.
  • The Start Effectivity Date on the EBOM connection is set to the date the component part is released.
  • The End Effectivity Date on the EBOM connection is kept blank (no end effectivity date).

This provides tracking to be able to determine which parts were connected to an assembly when it was released.


  • If the EBOM connection is from an in-process part, the action disconnects all EBOM relationships between the previous revision of this Part and its next assemblies ("To" direction) then connects identical EBOM relationships between those same next assemblies and this Part. This process has the same effect as if float were defined on the "To" end of the EBOM relationship.
  • If the EBOM connection is from a previous release of a part (previous to the latest released revision), then the EBOM connection is left as is. There is no need for an EBOM History connection.
  • The next action disconnects the Part Specification relationship between the previous revision of this part and its drawing print then connects an identical Part Specification relationship between that same drawing print and this part. For mass EBOM changes, an option can be set to disable this action.
  • The last action automatically changes the owner of the part to be a special user in the system, "Corporate." This locks down the part so no additional changes can be made and it removes the part from the engineer's desk.

Once in the Release state no connections or disconnections of any relationships below a part will be allowed. Connections above the part will however be permitted to both ECR objects that want to revise the part and to other parts that want to use this part in their Bill of Material.

Design Responsibility relationships can be disconnected at any point in the lifecycle. If you want other users in the company to be able to see the part after it is released, you should disconnect any Design Responsibility relationships, since only the owner and users who are members of the organization that has design responsibility for the part have read/show access to the part.

At some point in time it may be determined that a part should be made obsolete. When this occurs a person who belongs to the special Role, Product Obsolescence Manager, can login and promote the Part to Obsolete.

Obsolete

In this state, the part cannot be used in any new Bills of Material. This is accomplished by changing permissions such that no connects above the part are allowed. Once in the Obsolete state only the Product Obsolescence Manager will be able to demote the object back to the Release state.