Manage parts

Part records describe a physical item installed or consumed in the construction of a product.

When you create a new part record, you're providing the attributes that affect your organization's design, acquisition, use, service, recovery and disposal of that part.

These are the basic ideas for managing parts:

1. A part database record is identified primarily by the part's owner, type, and number. Within the part record, there may be one or more data iterations. (By convention, the physical part itself is not identified by revision.) Each record iteration can reflect the part's lifecycle phase, such as Preliminary or Production. While the part record iteration is pending, you describe part characteristics such as production attributes, costs, and materials. You may also create a structured relationship between the current part and other items. You establish these relationships by dragging items from the Item Explorer's Search or Previous lists, and dropping them onto the appropriate Markup tab.

   • Add parts that are used or consumed to produce the current parent part to the BOM tab.

   • Add related documents — specifications, assembly and test instructions, and drawings — to the References tab. You can also add parts, such as tooling or fixtures, that are relevant to the part's construction.

   • If the current part is acquired from supply chain partners, add these source parts to the Sources tab

2. When you've completed adding information to the part window, you release the part record by adding it to an implementing change form's Affected tab and then approving the change form. Until you submit the change form for approval, the part record remains pending and can be changed in whatever way that you want. After the change form has been submitted and approved, the part record becomes released, and the child relationships are formalized and appear on the Current lists of the BOM, Sources and References tabs.

   • Many of the released part record's attributes are locked and can never be modified;

   • Some attributes can be modified by members of the item trustee and product team; and

   • Some part attributes (such as the BOM) can be modified only by creating a new pending iteration of the part record.

3. You cancel a previously released part record by adding it to a new implementing change form's Affected tab, and approving that change form. (You do not remove child items from a canceled part, so there is no change to the Markup tab.) A part iteration is canceled when (a) a replacement iteration is released, or (b) when the part is obsolete and no further iterations are desired.

   To indicate a part is no longer acceptable for use, you can choose to release a new iteration with lifecycle of (say) Obsolete, or to cancel the currently-released iteration. The practical difference is whether you want the system to enforce its rules for canceled items.

   Canceling the part ensures that (a) it can't be canceled unless it's also removed from all parent items; (b) after it's canceled, the part can't be added to a new Markup list; and (c) users can be prevented from opening the part through role permissions. The part can be easily reactivated by creating and releasing a new iteration, even with the same revision and lifecycle.

A new iteration of a part record remains pending until you release it on an implementing change form. At that time, you'll also cancel the preceding part iteration record by listing it on the same change. At most, only one pending part record iteration and one released part record iteration can exist; any number of canceled iterations can exist.

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