Manufacturer Equivalent Lifecycle

A Manufacturer Equivalent Part (MEP) is a part supplied by a manufacturer to the host company. An enterprise part can reference any number of MEPs.

The Selected Equivalent relationship identifies the MEP to be used when reporting compliance information about a part. Materials Compliance Management also calculates compliances for the worst case, best case, and selected equivalent MEP. Reported Parts and Supplied Parts also use this lifecycle.

To promote a part in the development lifecycle, you must have either the Author, Leader, or Owner role. You must also be assigned in the same collaborative space in which the part resides. With the Author or Leader role, you must either own the part or have created it.

The Manufacturer Equivalent lifecycle includes these states:

This page discusses:

In Work

New parts and new part revisions are created in the In Work state. A part's name may be automatically generated or calculated by the user. 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 Materials page is used to build its Bill of Materials, a comprehensive definition of materials (and their effectivity dates) required to manufacture the product. The user can also copy another part's Bill of Materials 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 Materials and connecting the appropriate drawing prints, the owner promotes the object to the Frozen 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 In Work state, the following checks are fired:

  • All component parts attached via the EBOM relationship ("From" direction) must be at or beyond the Frozen state.
  • All drawings attached via the Part Specification relationship must be at or beyond the Frozen 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.
  • 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.

Frozen

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 materials, 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 Frozen 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 proposed changes connected to the part's ECO are checked to see if they are also in the Approved state. If all proposed changes are in the Approved state, the ECO is automatically promoted to the Review state. If any single proposed change 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 proposed changes 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.

Released

The Compliance or Component Engineer is responsible for promoting manufacturer equivalent parts to the Release state when the part definition is complete. When an equivalent part is promoted to this state, connections are maintained to the last released and/or in process revisions of its enterprise part, and history connections are maintained to the previous enterprise part. This is handled by the release state action trigger.

The Manufacturer Equivalent History relationship accommodates this delayed float logic. This relationship has all the same attributes as the Manufacturer Equivalent relationship. Both of these relationships have the attributes Start Effectivity Date and End Effectivity Date.

On the initial connection of a manufacturer equivalent part, the Start Effectivity Date and End Effectivity Date on the manufacturer equivalent part are both blank. It is not until the enterprise part is promoted to the Release state that the Start Effectivity Date is set to the released date of the enterprise part.

As a part enters the Release state, the following action fires:

  • When an enterprise part is released, the Start Effectivity Date on the Manufacturer Equivalent relationships between this enterprise part and the equivalent part is set to the released date of this enterprise part.

If the part that is being released is determined to be an equivalence part, then the following actions are performed:

  • If the Manufacturer Equivalent connection is from the highest release of an enterprise part, the following steps are performed:
    • An identical Manufacturer Equivalent History relationship is created between the parts. This connection has all the same attribute values as the Manufacturer Equivalent connection.
    • The End Effectivity Date is set on the Manufacturer Equivalent History connection to the date the equivalent part is released minus 1 second. (The subtraction of 1 second is so that the end effectivity date on the Manufacturer Equivalent History connection is not identical to the start effectivity date on the Manufacturer Equivalent connection)
    • The Manufacturer Equivalent connection is floated to the newly released equivalent part.
    • The Start Effectivity Date on the Manufacturer Equivalent connection is set to the date the equivalent part is released.
    • The End Effectivity Date on the Manufacturer Equivalent connection is kept blank (no end effectivity date since this is the last released revision)
  • If the Manufacturer Equivalent connection is from an in-process enterprise part, then the Manufacturer Equivalent relationship is floated to the newly released equivalent part. There is no need for a Manufacturer Equivalent History connection here.
  • If the Manufacturer Equivalent connection is from a previous release of an enterprise part (previous to the latest released revision), then the Manufacturer Equivalent connection is left as is. There is no need for a Manufacturer Equivalent History connection here.

Pending Obsolete

A manufacturer equivalent part is not always promoted directly from Release to Obsolete. In many cases, the OEM gets information from the supplier or a manufacturer a few weeks or months before the MEP is definitely removed from their catalog. The OEM needs to capture this information as soon as possible.

The MEP cannot be kept in the Release state since it should not be used for any new design, but it cannot be promoted to Obsolete since it can still be used in production.

Until its effective obsolescence date, it can be promoted to the Pending Obsolete state.

The MEP promotion from Release to Pending Obsolete would be triggered by the Obsolete request right after its creation.

The MEP promotion from Pending Obsolete to Obsolete would be triggered by the Obsolete request when it is promoted to Complete.

Obsolete

As a part enters the Obsolete state, the following action fires:

  • When a equivalent part is promoted to Obsolete, a trigger sets the End Effectivity Date on the Manufacturer Equivalent relationship between that part and its enterprise part to the date this part enters the Obsolete state.