Windchill 10.0 adds several key enhancements to Windchill MPMLink to manage modular manufacturing BOMs, process plans and work instructions which support product family variability. The ability to deliver a numerous number of product configurations of increasing complexity has significant impacts on the manufacturing organizations.
Leveraging the integral solution of Windchill MPMLink, the manufacturing engineer is able to quickly analyze the engineering product options and understand all the potential option combinations that will need to be produced. Assessing all potential combinations early in the development process is critical in order to ensure that all variations can be produced given the manufacturing capacities and constraints but mainly to design “modular” manufacturing deliverables that will optimize the manufacturing plans for these variable products and streamline the operations for commonly ordered products. In order to execute on this modular product architecture strategy, companies must enable manufacturing process re-use and minimize the number of manufacturing deliverables required to support all possible options.
The new capabilities also increase the efficiency of the manufacturing engineers by automatically propagating product family and option information from the engineering product definition (eBOM) to the manufacturing deliverables.
Watch this small video http://communities.ptc.com/videos/1622 demontrating management of options and variants from engineering to final manufacturing deliverables.
~ Francois