About Manufacturing Products

A manufacturing product is a resource that contains the collection of parts representing the "as-manufactured" product at a given organizational resource level. It includes all of the design parts as well as additional parts and raw materials used in the manufacturing process (such as glue, sealant, etc.).

Manufacturing products allow you to perform resource programming when planning data has yet to be defined, or use planning data as input to create in-process products.

This page discusses:

See Also
Synchronizing Data with Planning

Resource Programming Without Planning Data

A manufacturing product can be created as any other resource.

Inserting a Manufacturing Product resource (via Existing Product or Resource) creates an empty manufacturing product at the specified organizational resource level (station, line, etc.). It can only be inserted on an organizational resource.

The grab activity allows for selection of product under a manufacturing product. With this programming model:

  • Attachments can be created between a manufacturing product and a device, as both are resources.
  • There are no PPR context dependencies.
  • A product that is under a PPR context cannot be selected, except those that are implemented by process planning data.

Line Simulation with No Process Planning Data

Dynamic rerouting occurs when manufacturing products are manually built from each station/line under the following conditions:

  • Each intermediate assembly is defined by a physical product and inserted in the manufacturing product of the appropriate stations
  • Depending on the assembly flow, these intermediate assemblies are inserted into each other

Example 1: One Line, Two Stations, Sequential Assembly Flow

  • Station 1 (S1) > assemble A and B
  • Station 2 (S2) > assemble C on AB



There are two assembly steps in this scenario:

  • Product 1 containing A and B
  • Product 2 containing C and Product 1

The manufacturing product contains:

  • For Station 1 (S1): Product 1
  • For Station 2 (S2): Product 2
  • For Line (L1): Product 2, or a product that contains Product 2



Example 2: One Line, Three Stations, Parallel Assembly Flow

  • Station 1 (S1): assemble A and B
  • Station 2 (S2): assemble C and D
  • Station 3 (S3): Assemble AB and CD



There are three assembly steps in this scenario:

  • Product 1 containing A and B
  • Product 2 containing C and D
  • Product 3 containing Product 1 and Product 2

The manufacturing product contains:

  • For Station 1 (S1): Product 1
  • For Station 2 (S2): Product 2
  • For Station 3 (S3): Product 3
  • For Line (L1): Product 3, or a product that contains Product 3



When the active simulation object is changed, the manufacturing product structure of the active resource is checked for validation. A message is displayed if dynamic rerouting on the active resource cannot work with respect to its children.

If the structure is valid, the simulation of a line can safely reuse links on the manufacturing product content of stations in the manufacturing product of the line.

Resource Programming Using Planning as Input

When using planning as input, the manufacturing product is created via Synchronize Data with Planning.

Synchronize Data with Planning creates a manufacturing product populated with the managed parts and fasteners indicated by the planning structure, and can be called at the following levels:

  • Organizational resource
    • Line (with scoped root system and system children), to support product flow and multistation programming.
    • Station (with scoped system), to support concurrent programming with different user roles to program the behavior of the station.
  • Part operation (for Machining tasks with implemented operation), to define machining setup assembly and intermediate states of products.

Note: All planning data must be loaded in the session before using Synchronize Data with Planning.

Synchronizing Data with Planning for an Organizational Resource

When synchronizing data with planning for an organizational resource, the following sequence of events determines the manufacturing product that is created.

When creating a manufacturing product:

  • Create the manufacturing product and link it to the organizational resource.
  • Retrieve the scoped system, or the parent system of the operation implemented by the children of the working resource.
  • Determine whether a corresponding product has not already been created in a parent or child organizational resource.
    • If not, a new product is created and the managed parts/fasteners implemented by the planning structure are instantiated.
    • If so, this product is instantiated.
  • Retrieve previous systems with respect to the product flow.
  • Determine whether a corresponding product has not already been created in a parent or child organizational resource.
    • If not, a new product is created and the managed parts/fasteners implemented by the planning structure are instantiated.
    • If so, this product is instantiated.
  • Repeat the previous step until there are no more previous systems in the product flow to retrieve.
  • Retrieve the localization position from the planning data and apply it to the instance of the root product under the manufacturing product.

When updating an existing manufacturing product:

  • Retrieve the scoped system, or the parent system of the operation implemented by the children of the working resource.
  • Compare the output products from this structure with the current one.
    • If they are the same, no update is performed.
    • If the number of children is the same but parts or positions differ, these parts are replaced and positions are updated.
    • If the number of children is different, all system output product is replaced.
    • If output products have human interfaces, the human interfaces are kept after the update. Even in the case where all system output is replaced.

Synchronizing Data with Planning for a Part Operation

When synchronizing data with planning for a part operation, the following sequence of events determines the manufacturing product that is created.

In the specific case of part operation, part/stock/STL/holes implemented by the associated planning operation implementing an End Elementary Item (EEI) are instantiated.

  • The scope of the EEI is the design part.
  • The process output of the EEI is the STL.
  • The process output of Provide Process Child of EEI is the stock.
  • The drilling processes pointing to fasteners defines the holes to drill.

When updating an existing manufacturing product,

  • If a manufacturing product is already linked to the part operation, instances of products that are out of date are replaced by new versions.
  • Holes cannot be replaced, but a new version is created. You can then use the functionality provided by machining to compare both versions and update associated program.

B.I. Essentials Status

The status of IPPs under a manufacturing product can be viewed in B.I. Essentials under manufacturing product status.

Display of Manufacturing Products

Several manufacturing products can potentially be generated at different levels (task, station, line).

When an organizational resource is defined as ASO:

  • All of its direct manufacturing products children are shown. All other manufacturing products are hidden.
  • If the ASO does not aggregate any manufacturing product, child organizational resources are considered.
  • If no manufacturing product is found, ancestor organizational resources are considered.

If the ASO is a working resource, then the associated manufacturing product of the related tasks is shown, and the manufacturing product of the station is hidden. If there is no manufacturing product associated to the task, the manufacturing products of the ancestor organizational resource is shown.

Dynamic Rerouting of Links

During simulation of a line, sometimes a relation points to a product that is in the manufacturing product of a station. In this case, the link is dynamically rerouted on the equivalent product in the manufacturing product of the line.

This applies to the following objects:

  • Grab activity
  • Human PUT activity
  • Manufacturing tags pointing to design fasteners
  • Sensor-based grab
  • Tag group pointing to a product attachment
  • Part to positioner attachment (engineering connection)
  • Simulation state

Design Assembly Display

The EBOM (or the product assembly under the PRR Context) is hidden if the ASO has an associated manufacturing product that was created with Synchronize Data with Planning..

Product buildup functionality is also disabled.