I was thinking about creating our work orders through pdm. We have an existing workflow for drawings. A lot of the drawings we created have a part that needs to be fabricated. Being able to track when the part is ordered and complete would greatly benefit us so we would know when we can tell our production floor that it is ready. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to approach this or if it is feasible for pdm?
Allen,
Speaking from a inexperienced PDM admin, but a seasoned manufacturing/ERP perspective, what you are suggesting I think could work, given a few very specific variables. I'm making some assumptions and taking some guesses, primarily that you are tracking manufacturing through your facility, not just "make this please" and "is it done yet?".
If my prior assumption was wrong, and you aren't tracking to track/manage manufacturing steps, and just trying to provide a list of "things ready to make" and ask manufacturing to record when they are done, the major challenge I see is mostly point 3 above. I'll expound a bit:
I'm not sure what type of business/industry you are in, but if you have to deal with/encounter any of the complexities listed above, I would recommend you consider looking for an ERP solution that integrates with SOLIDWORKS and PDM.
Andrew,
First let me clarify, when I said "part" in my initial question I meant "tooling". Your reply was very informative and detailed. My company currently has an ERP system in place. With this system it may be able to be integrated into SolidWorks PDM but we are not ready for that jump. As of right now we are in the process to add enhancements to our roughly implemented PDM setup.
At this facility we are as you would call a "one stop shop". First we have a request to create a part (most of which are mainly similar). We then internally design the part creating drawings and fabricating tooling to run on our machines all in house.
If we were to combine our ERP system with PDM I could see a great benefit because it would help with the disconnect between marketing(which places the order to run new parts) and manufacturing by keeping up with the status of the process from start to finish.
Allen,
Tooling makes a lot more sense, as I'm assuming it's on a one off, for a given job, very specific part/tooling that will never again be made. That makes things a lot easier because the Qty is known (I assume), the file won't be in use somewhere else (as if it was shared among projects/jobs, etc.), the due date could probably be managed as a property in the data-card, etc.
Hi Allen,
We have developed an XML based shop floor router, ECN, issue sheet, etc. system that uses 1 PDM add-in called Attach References Tool that automates the attachment of related documents to the XML. Our solution is similar to what Jim Sculley described.
The xml provides full integration with downstream content distribution systems like another solution we recommend called Flatter Files. PDM was developed for content creation but Flatter Files was developed for content distribution.
Our system brings you
Hope this helps,
Tim CEPA
One simple way is something like this:
You can use the 'Where Used' tab to find all the work orders that contain a drawing and the 'Contains' tab to see all the documents in a Work Order. If you make transitions for the drawing with the same names as transitions for the workflow, you can see where in the workflow the drawing is at a glance.
This is by no means a complete solution but it may be enough to get you thinking.