Components Engineering

I have recently visited several companies (in the E&E industry, but I think this post will be relevant not only for those). Each one of them sees in standard components management a big challenge. The amazing thing is that most of the PLM vendors in the market do not take this issue seriously (otherwise each one of them would have been already delivered a ready to use, best practice for this challenge…)

Do not worry… I know one vendor that does take it seriously…

So, first what is the issue: In order to streamline work between the engineering department (working with PLM) and the purchasing department (working mainly with the ERP system) and in order to control the standard components that are approved for the engineers to use, it is important to manage the manufacturer assignments within the engineering environment (PLM). Companies should not depend on a single manufacturer to supply the standard items as such a
dependency will not allow the company to negotiate over the item’s cost price. More than one manufacturer may supply the same item to the company with different prices and levels of quality levels.

For electronic components, the same manufacturer may produce the same functional item in different qualities. In such a case, the same manufacturer can supply more than one item to the company. These “external” items are referred to as “Manufacturer items”, and the company needs to decide how to manage them internally.
The list of manufacturers that are approved to supply a certain item is known as “Approved Manufacturer
List” or “AML”. This list is proposed by the engineers and defined by the components engineers, as they can decide on the functional data of their internal items.
The importance of such a definition is that the purchaser now is able to review the AML without the need of the engineer, and the engineer has the correct and valid data to decide on the standard components he will use in the product structure.

In fact, you can find several best practices to manage components engineering:

1. Manufacturer items directly linked to the BOM
   In this approach, the manufacturer item numbers are the only ones managed for standard/purchased components. The manufacturer item number is manually defined in the item data. The manufacturer will be defined for the item as part of the item definition.
2. Manufacturer items as a link between the company standard item and the manufacturer
   This case is similar to the previous one, but the manufacturer information is defined on the relation between the item and its manufacturer(s).
   The manufacturer item number will be stored on the relation between the company item and the manufacturer.
3. The company standard items are linked in the BOM, Manufacturer items are linked to them
   In this approach, the manufacturer item is defined with its own data and relevant attachments
   such as data sheets, drawings etc.
   This approach enables various manufacturer items to be linked to the company standard item (with the different priority) for the same manufacturer. This approach also enables much robust methodology when you need to change/replace manufacturer item because of obsolesces for example.

If you ask me, the best approach is #3, but any of those are OK and valid.

You can have a look at an example how this is been solved within the PLM system. Obviously from the only one takes it seriously…