Engineering Control/Revision-Level Processing

Changes to engineering specifications are controlled by defining the following information for the part being changed:

·     The new revision level of the part, based on the effectivity date of the engineering change.

·     The date or engineering change order number on which the new structure becomes effective in production.

·     The characteristics of the change, typically related to the bill of material, although the part may change revision levels without having any bill of material changes (for new quality control inspection standards, for example).

·     Reference information associated with the change, such as the engineering change order number.

Design Engineering maintains and controls changes on a part-by-part basis.  The user can coordinate engineering changes that affect more than one part by assigning each of them the same engineering change order number and effectivity date.  A user-defined flag indicates whether changes made to an effectivity date should be automatically reflected on all product structure links affected by the corresponding engineering change.  An engineering change where-used inquiry allows the user to view, for all parts or all components of a specified part, the product structure links affected by an engineering change order.

The Design Engineering module helps the user control engineering changes by monitoring the following key data:  engineering change order number, effectivity date, and revision level.  Part revisions can be maintained manually or by the system.

Future engineering changes can be monitored by using the Pending Engineering Changes Report.  This report identifies by effectivity date the engineering changes to be implemented in production.  Pending engineering changes are made automatically.  The manufacturing revision is updated automatically when the effectivity date of the engineering change becomes current.

The Master Scheduling, Requirements Planning, Inventory Control, Just-in-Time, and Product Costing modules use the effectivity data stored on the Product Structure File so that proper components are selected based on their effectivity dates.  The effectivity date initially comes from the engineering change order, but can be overridden on the product structure record.

Design Engineering has three conversations to maintain and control part revision levels:

·     Revision-Level Maintenance.  This conversation allows the user to add, delete, and change revision levels for a part.  Revision levels may be added for an existing active part as long as the revision number and effectivity date fall sequentially between the other revision levels for that part.

An existing revision level can be changed as long as it's not the current revision level for the part.  In that case, the effectivity date cannot be changed, although the description can.  A revision level can be deleted as long as it's not the current revision level or as long as there are no flow authorizations associated with the revision level being deleted.  The net change flag will be set if a current or future revision is added or deleted, or if the effectivity date changes.

·     Revision-Level Generation.  This conversation is designed to assign/update revision levels to a part based on the engineering change orders (ECOs) in the Product Structure File (DE120M).  All ECO activity for one day equates to one revision level.  Only active parts with the net change flag set to replan (PMNCFL = 2) will be processed.  This program is invoked automatically as part of the  requirements planning generation process.

The actual revision levels are assigned sequentially starting from the current revision level on the Part Master File (DE100M).  If the revision level already exists on the Revision Level File (DE170M), it is updated with the new revision level information.  If a user-added revision is encountered, the revision level number is changed unless it falls in date sequence with the revision levels being generated.  A report is printed to indicate to the user that a user-added revision has been changed.  Any revisions that were generated in a previous run and that are greater than the last revision generated in the current run are deleted.

·     Revision-Level Daily Update.  This conversation submits a request to the program, which reads the Revision Level File (DE170M) to determine what revision levels will become effective on the next shop date.  The Part Master File (DE100M) is updated with the new revision level and effectivity date.  The previous revision level is updated as history on the Revision Level File (history revision flag).  A report is generated indicating all new revision levels.

·     The steps involved in using the revision levels are shown below.

Steps Involved in Using Revision Levels

Routing Change.  Currently, the system changes revision levels only when the product structure is modified.  To keep track of routing changes, you can access the Revision Level Maintenance conversation and manually enter a revision level immediately right after a routing change.  Therefore, when the Daily Update program is run, it will read the Revision Level File, see the revision level date, and update the Part Master File.  Once these steps are performed, the part's revision level will reflect the change in the routing.