Teamcenter Change Process and Workflows

I know engineers, they LOVE to change things……Dr McCoy, Star Trek:  The Motion Picture

In today’s blog, I’ll be covering the Teamcenter engineering change process and workflows. Specifically, we’ll take a look at how engineering change improves products as well as the administrative challenges that come with documenting and communicating changes throughout product development and manufacturing organizations.

Change processes are executed with workflows.

A change may be a temporary or permanent alteration to a configuration, design requirement, or documentation.

The Engineering Order (EO) summarizes all parts of the change process

Let’s look at a Change Request:

We may choose the workflow that best suits the conditions for the change.

The workflow may be detailed, such as this one. Note, it begins with replicate the problem, then define potential solutions

The best solution to meet needs is then determined –  and either approved or rejected. The proposed solution could be more expensive than the problem it solves, or be ideally suited but hard to implement, as examples.

At any point, the process may stop. If the problem cannot be replicated, the workflow completes with no defined solution. Otherwise, each step of the solution process is defined and approved.

Other workflows could be used to execute this process.

Here is a simple version: detail reviews are held separately, and the outcome is signature approved.

Let’s look at an example in Teamcenter:

To give context, pretend our new Master Mover Product is in development. Within the height and pivot assembly, the clearance between the bracket and the actuator has been identified as too close. We will process an Engineering Order, a Change Request for a bracket change.

This is an Active Workspace, BOM View of Top-Level assembly:

And this is the Height and Pivot Assembly:

The visualizer files allow measurements between components, and we see we have a little over 6mm nominal clearance. We will proceed with a request for a revision change to this bracket (i.e: make more clearance).

In most engineering environments one person would make this change and implement it through a change process. To illustrate, Ed (our engineer) is going to define a change, then delegate the drawing change to a designer. Mary, our pretend quality verification person, will validate the changes to the model / drawing and where used assembly are complete.

Ed will find the Released Item Revision for the bracket:

Then, he creates a New Engineering Order This is Ed’s Home Folder.

Within his working space, he has created a Summary folder to contain all changes for this new product. The new EO will be linked/placed here for easy retrieval.

The new, empty form is created, and the next steps are to populate with required information.

The steps.

1. Ed will copy the PDF from the Bracket item revision, and attach it to the Engineering order
2. The PDF will be marked up to define the requested change
3. The Change Request form will be filled in, this summarizes the intent
4. Much like redlining a BOM, Ed will add the existing bracket and where used item revisions into the EO into the Reference Data Tab. Then the existing bracket revision will be added to the obsolete tab.  In other words, remove this revision and replace it with the one in the Revised Parts (which will be created during the workflow by Don, our designer)
5. Ed will then submit the change to a simple workflow,
6. When the process completes, Rev A will be obsolete and Rev B will be in the Assembly.

Steps, 1 and 2….This is the markup of the drawing, which is placed in the EO attachments.

For step 3, the change request form is filled out.

And as part of step 4, we add data to be changed to appropriate tabs.

Note: the Bracket is currently released. When the workflow completes, it will be obsolete, and Revision B will be active.

Steph 5: Submit to workflow

Step 6: all updates and approvals are summarized – and this is how the workflow has progressed…

Please note how the Engineering Order item incorporates all aspects of the process.

This is exactly why Ed made a link to his Engineering Order. After all, it’s so much easier to come back to.

Finally, the process is now complete. Note the status changes.

We all know how much time is wasted when you can’t execute your workflow effectively due to issues around your processes. A PLM tool like Teamcenter will dramatically reduce manual effort and process management costs as well as provide a user-friendly foundation for your modern-day team to efficiently collaborate – whether working from the office or home.

At Swoosh, we’ve helped a large number of companies reach their PLM objectives and set up plus develop Teamcenter software. If you’re wondering if your organization might be the right fit for this tool, feel free to reach out anytime. PS: we also offer a complimentary (yep, totally free!) 30-day trial so you can see for yourself how Teamcenter will transform your process.

What other PLM topics are you interested in seeing on our blog? Drop us a comment below!

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