Team ECO Lifecycle

The Team ECO lifecycle governs ECOs in the Team BOM Editor (TBE) environment.

Note: The Team ECO policy has been deprecated as of V6R2013. Team ECO objects created in an earlier release are supported, but no new Team ECOs can be created.

The following are general role access statements:

  • Author or Leader roles can edit the project context Team ECO in all states prior to Release.
  • Reader or Contributor have read only access in all states.
  • Only the owner in the respective state can promote or demote the Team ECO.

The Team ECO lifecycle includes these states:

This page discusses:

Create

A Team ECO can be created by a Product Structure Design user with the roles Author or Leader. The creator must assign a Responsible Design Engineer (RDE) and specify approval, reviewer, and distribution lists.

The ECO owner can then edit the ECO details including changing attribute values and reassigning the approval and reviewer lists. The owner can also reassign the RDE, who has overall coordination responsibility of the work to be performed on the ECO and also assigns work on the ECO.

All users of the current project context with roles Author or Leader can add EC parts as ECO proposed changes with the Requested Change value "For Release" or "For Revise."

The current owner can promote the ECO to the next state (Evaluate). During promotion, an action trigger (RouteToResponsibleDesignEngineer) runs to set the ownership to the assigned RDE and notifies the RDE with an email message that includes PnO information (context product and organization). In addition, an action trigger (CreateRouteForState) creates and starts a review route between the Evaluate and Design Work states based on the Reviewer list. All members in the Reviewer route list are assigned their tasks and are notified by email.

Note: If a route already exists (this may happen on demote and subsequent promote), then another route is not created, but a notification is sent to the route owner (RDE) to restart the route.

Evaluate

The RDE is the owner of the ECO. Product Structure Design users of the current project context with roles Author or Leader can edit ECO details and add/remove EC parts as ECO proposed changes. Parts can be added with the Requested Change value "For Release" or "For Revise."

The RDE evaluates the proposed changes with respect to the required information and makes changes if required. The corresponding tasks/notifications assigned to the users in the Reviewer route are delivered to the respective owners. The RDE enters the disposition codes for the part proposed changes.

The Reviewer route must be completed before the ECO can be promoted to the Design Work state. Each user who is assigned a task in the route must compete that task and approve it. If all tasks in the route are completed, the route is automatically completed. Once the route is completed, the ECO is automatically promoted to the Design Work state. The RDE is notified by email that the ECO has been promoted.

An action trigger revises the part if the part is under TBE-controlled. If the part is Product Structure Design-controlled, then the user must revise the product in the Product Structure Design app and then do a manual synchronization to create the new revision of the part in TBE.

If the ECO is demoted at this point, the ownership of the object is reassigned to the originator.

Once the parts are revised, the corresponding part owner is notified by email.

Design Work

The RDE is the owner of the ECO. Product Structure Design users of the current project context with roles Author or Leader can edit ECO details and add/remove ECO proposed changes that have a Requested Change value “For Release.”

When the owner promotes the ECO from the Design Work state, an action trigger creates and starts an approval route between the Review and Release states based on the Approval list. All members in the Approval route list are assigned their tasks and are notified by email. All proposed changes must be in the Approved state.

Review

In the Review state, users cannot add/remove proposed changes but can edit the ECO details. The RDE verifies all changes on proposed changes, and checks that disposition codes are correct and that the ECO is ready to be released.

Before promoting the ECO from the Review to the Release state, the Reviewer route must be completed, that is, all users must complete their assigned tasks and approve them. Once all the tasks of the route are completed, the route is automatically completed, resulting in the release of the ECO. Proposed changes (EC parts) are also released. While releasing the ECO, all revisions are updated in the BOM/Product Structures based on control. The ECO owner is changed to “Corporate.” If the ECO is demoted, a new route is not created since the route is already complete.

An EC part cannot be released before its associated Product Structure Design product is released (if an associated Product Structure Design product exists). A trigger (PromoteCorrespondingDevlopmentPart) on the EC Part policy checks that the corresponding Product Structure Design product is in the Released state.

Release

When the ECO is promoted to Release, all distribution list smembers are notified. In the Release state, no changes can be made to the ECO or to its proposed changes. All proposed changes will also be in the Release state.

Cancelled

In any state prior to Release, the Team ECO can be cancelled by its owner. This halts the ECO’s lifecycle and ends the change management process for its proposed changes.

When an ECO is cancelled, all proposed changes connected to the ECO are disconnected and the ECO is promoted to the Cancelled state.