Send Revision Number to ERP for Revision numbering on Orders

[AlexLachance]

Good afternoon everyone,

So, we've been having an issue lately with some of our contractors. They produce some of our components in batches, and do not acknowledge the drawing being sent to them every time, most likely in order to avoid having to verify each time if there's been a modification done to it. To avoid producing outdated components, they ask of us to have the revision number on each order, which means they ask of our buyer to open the drawing to very each time if there's been a modification done to it, which is something we want to avoid too.

So, as usual, the burden is sent to the technical department. We've figured we'd send the Revision number from the drawing to our ERP and have the ERP write the revision number on each order, so that they can then send the order to our external contractor, with the revision number on it, so that the contractor would know which revision it is directly from the order and as such would avoid opening the file simply for that purpose.

The problem I'm facing, is that I can't figure a way to get the revision number when sending the BOM to our ERP, because revision tables cannot be created twice on the same page, so I cannot have a second revision table created simply for the purpose of grabbing the revision number from it. I'm hoping to avoid having to have a programmation made to read a PDF and grab the revision from that.

So, I turn to you guys in hopes that someone has done something similar or has a solution for this. How would you handle revision control from drawings to our ERP?

I had hopes of being able to do as I do to send our BOM, which is create an overall BOM and forward it entirely to our ERP and then have it be deleted from the drawing. I was hoping of being able to create a second revision table, that would be identical to the existing one, and then grab the revision number from that one and delete it, but unfortunately that's not possible as far as I'm aware.

[jcapriotti]

Isn't your revision stored as a custom property in the drawing file?

[AlexLachance]

Isn't your revision stored as a custom property in the drawing file?

I did not know that, but indeed. Could I grab the drawing's custom property somehow?

[AlexLachance]

Isn't your revision stored as a custom property in the drawing file?

Welp sir, you are the solution to my problem!

We're going to do exactly that, grab the custom property from the drawing file to send it to our ERP. Much easier then having to "scan" a PDF to find the revision table and number.

Cheers mate, if you were from around, I'd pay you a beer at the town's local bar tonight!

[jcapriotti]

Welp sir, you are the solution to my problem!

We're going to do exactly that, grab the custom property from the drawing file to send it to our ERP. Much easier then having to "scan" a PDF to find the revision table and number.

Cheers mate, if you were from around, I'd pay you a beer at the town's local bar tonight!

Thanks.....I live in a "dry" county so no alcohol sales.

[SPerman]

I didn't know those were still a thing.

[AlexLachance]

Thanks.....I live in a "dry" county so no alcohol sales.

Geez, when are you moving out?

[jcapriotti]

I didn't know those were still a thing.

Yeah, Mississippi still has some counties living under prohibition. Our main city in the county elected to overrule the county after they hired some consultants to determine why there was no business growth and they pointed it out. But there are still rules in place such as no bars, restaurants can serve though.

[the_h4mmer]

PDM can export an XML of the BOM and Revision numbers as well when a design goes thru a specific transition. If you can parse the XML data into the ERP system, then it should be there by default.

[dave.laban]

Updating the revision in ERP is just part of our drawing release process so ERP is already in sync with the drawings. Manual and tedious (for now, I'm hopefully bullying through that upgrade some time this year) but means the right stuff gets ordered.

[AlexLachance]

PDM can export an XML of the BOM and Revision numbers as well when a design goes thru a specific transition. If you can parse the XML data into the ERP system, then it should be there by default.

Unfortunately we didn't go with PDM because it's too expensive, so we built our own version with CustomTools instead.

@dave.laban how is it done internally at your place? This is how we figured to do it for now:

Create order from ERP
ERP looks up part numbers
ERP looks up revision number in part properties.
ERP checks to see if it matches with current revision number. If not, then it corrects the revision number accordingly.
ERP puts revision number on order sent to external contractor.


Doing it this way avoids to do a massive check everytime we forward a project to our ERP and only does the check and the parts that require it.

[dave.laban]

Unfortunately we didn't go with PDM because it's too expensive, so we built our own version with CustomTools instead.

@dave.laban how is it done internally at your place? This is how we figured to do it for now:

Create order from ERP
ERP looks up part numbers
ERP looks up revision number in part properties.
ERP checks to see if it matches with current revision number. If not, then it corrects the revision number accordingly.
ERP puts revision number on order sent to external contractor.


Doing it this way avoids to do a massive check everytime we forward a project to our ERP and only does the check and the parts that require it.

It's pretty simple here (or at least, on this side of the engineering / purchasing fence it's simple). Our ECN process drives all the part revisions, then the very final step before the ECN can be closed out is that I have to log in to our ERP platform and update all the revisions on the affected parts. Then whenever purchasing generate a purchase / sales order they've already got all the correct rev numbers in front of them to put on the paperwork. I'll also occasionally be asked to provide a TDP so the vendor has a copy of all the latest rev documents.

[AlexLachance]

It's pretty simple here (or at least, on this side of the engineering / purchasing fence it's simple). Our ECN process drives all the part revisions, then the very final step before the ECN can be closed out is that I have to log in to our ERP platform and update all the revisions on the affected parts. Then whenever purchasing generate a purchase / sales order they've already got all the correct rev numbers in front of them to put on the paperwork. I'll also occasionally be asked to provide a TDP so the vendor has a copy of all the latest rev documents.

Sounds pretty manual and quite hefty? Is that not a regular task that requires to be reproduced multiple times? Why not automate some of it..?

[dave.laban]

I've been asking the automation question since I arrived at the company, though such was the state of things at that point even the manual process wasn't even documented. Been slowly turning the ship around and so automation is the next step. In reality though it isn't too painful - once you're logged in to the ERP system manually editing the revision is <5 seconds per item by the time you've tapped in the PN, clicked the Rev field and entered the new number.

[the_h4mmer]

I've been asking the automation question since I arrived at the company, though such was the state of things at that point even the manual process wasn't even documented. Been slowly turning the ship around and so automation is the next step. In reality though it isn't too painful - once you're logged in to the ERP system manually editing the revision is <5 seconds per item by the time you've tapped in the PN, clicked the Rev field and entered the new number.

...but how big are the BOMs? 5*500 is a decent amount of time...also, how long does it take to get into the ERP system? For me, when I need to get into our ERP, I go refill my drink

[dave.laban]

My current main new product development has 125 items out of 298 (distinct) items on the BOM as new items, however creating NEW objects in our ERP is fine as they all default to Rev 0, the same as they are in PDM.

Revisions to products on an ECN would then only typically be <10 parts per ECN which is then the manual process, which is then less than a minutes adjustment in ERP.

Logging in to ERP isn't too arduous. Password authentication is probably the longest step but clicking on the icon to launch it to getting in to the editor is probably less than 3 minutes.

[AlexLachance]

On a big drawing here, sending all the project to the ERP takes about a minute, then processing it can take another 1 to 10 minute depending. A big assembly can have around 5000 components here, about 500 being the total of distinctive parts

[the_h4mmer]

My current main new product development has 125 items out of 298 (distinct) items on the BOM as new items, however creating NEW objects in our ERP is fine as they all default to Rev 0, the same as they are in PDM.

Revisions to products on an ECN would then only typically be <10 parts per ECN which is then the manual process, which is then less than a minutes adjustment in ERP.

Logging in to ERP isn't too arduous. Password authentication is probably the longest step but clicking on the icon to launch it to getting in to the editor is probably less than 3 minutes.

That's not terrible then. Not sure if it's old server hardware, a dirty network, or the ERP software, but for our system login takes about 90 seconds, then getting to any specific part would take another 120 seconds. Never had to update a revision (luckily someone else does that), but I could see things stacking up if/when having to change lots of parts, hence my suggestion for the BOM XML exporting.