Integration of Windchill with Oracle ERP: 10 Elements to Consider

1. Integration of Windchill with Oracle ERP: 10 Elements to Consider Gary Stefani and Ron Welch BAE SYSTEMS Platform Solutions

2. Presentation Outline • Current production PDM/ERP footprint • Ten key elements to consider from our implementations since 2002. For each element: • What questions you should ask yourself if you are doing a new PDM-ERP integration • Examples of how ONE business answered the questions • Lessons Learned from BAE Implementations • Demo of PDMLink – Oracle interface and workflow

3. What does our Windchill-Oracle Implementation Look Like? • Current: Windchill 6 to Oracle 11.5.10 with RTP Interface • Development: Windchill PDMLink 8 to Oracle 11.5.10 with ESI Interface (Goes live in production on July tbd) • 3 Primary Design Engineering Sites (NY, CA) • 5 Manufacturing Sites (NY, CA, IN, TX) • ~1900 Users • Common Workflows & Database across sites

4. Primary Business Objects Managed in Windchill and Approximate Stats • Part Numbers (200,000+ including BOM’s) • BOMs (75,000) • Typical Number of Levels: 4-5 • Typical BOM Size: Median 1500 Occurrences, Max 6000 Occurrences • Documents (179,000) • Change Requests (185,000) All of this data (and its supporting data) is being migrated from Windchill Foundation 6.0 to PDMLink 8.0.

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6. Ten Key Elements to Consider • Business Requirements and Workflows • Object and Attribute Mapping • Manufacturing Orgs (Distribution Targets) and Org Assignment Strategy • Revision Scheme • Effectivity Considerations • Validation of Publications • Multi-Level BOM Considerations • BOM Management Issues • BOM-Specific Attributes • Mechanics of the Interface Functionality (RTP and ESI)

7. 1. Business Requirements And Workflows Key Questions • What business processes will be implemented via life cycles and workflows in PDMLink? • Which processes require integration of information between PDM and ERP? • Where in the workflows will data need to be published via the integration?

8. 1. Business Requirements And Workflows Review Document Create Document Publish Doc&CR Info To Flex Fields Release Describing Document Create Part Master Publish Part Master Update BOM Review BOM Create BOM Publish BOM Review Change Publish Parts&BOM’s On CA NDV Create Change Request Create Change Order Create Change Activity

9. BOM Automatically Published Upon Release Windchill View Interface (RTP) Oracle View

10. 2. Object and Attribute Mapping Key Questions and Issues • Which business objects will be integrated? • Part Masters and BOMs integrated. Docs and Changes integrated indirectly as attributes on the associated Part. • Which attributes will be integrated for each object? For each attribute: • Which function and/or system is the record of authority? • What are the creation and update rules for each attribute? • Other considerations: • Oracle Item Templates, should they be triggered by the integration? • Consistency of PDMLink resource bundles with Oracle list of values for shared attributes.

11. 2. Object and Attribute Mapping Example Attribute Mapping RTP used simple ASCII configuration files for attribute mapping. ESI uses Tibco’s sophisticated, graphical, Business Works tool that operates at the business object level, rather than the basic attribute level. The ESI approach allows derived attribute mapping, dynamic filters, business rule enforcement in the interface etc.

12. 2. Object and Attribute Mapping Example • Other considerations: • Oracle Item Templates. BAE mapped Windchill Part Type to Oracle Item Template Name. The Oracle template automatically assigns certain attributes unique to that part type, upon publication. • PDMLink resource bundles must be consistent with Oracle list of values for shared attributes. If they are not perfectly mapped down to the character, interface failures will occur. Examples: Unit of Measure, Part Type

13. 3. Manufacturing Orgs and Org Assignment Strategy Key Questions and Issues • Will all items use a consistent set of orgs? • Do different orgs have different business rules? • How will org assignments be managed in Windchill? (Programmatically assigned or assigned by user?)

14. 3. Manufacturing Orgs and Org Assignment Strategy Example • BAE used a multi-org implementation in Oracle. • Oracle “Inventory Orgs” represent different manufacturing sites, and/or different assembly lines within a manufacturing site that require segregated inventory. • Currently 18 Orgs in our Oracle implementation. A subset can be selected by user in the Windchill workflow. • Parts can be assigned to one or more orgs. • Do different orgs have different business rules? • This was avoided by BAE. Strive for common processes. • Org assignment approach • For non-assembly Parts, done programatically by the workflow • For Assemblies, a user selects the org assignment for the Parent item by clicking a radio button in the workflow task. The workflow programatically makes the assignments for the child parts on the assembly.

15. 3. Manufacturing Orgs and Org Assignment Strategy

16. 4. Revision Scheme/Considerations Key Questions and Issues • Oracle limits revision field size to 3 characters maximum, (not a problem in our business). • For new part creation, any revision may be initially created, but Oracle will always create an initial revision, regardless of the revision passed by Windchill. • Will view versions be used? • In Oracle, revisions must be created in ASCII sequence. (In Windchill any sequence may be used, driven by a resource bundle). • Which revisions of parent and child parts shall be published? (Latest?, Latest released?, Other?).

17. 4. Revision Scheme (Lesson Learned) PDMLink Oracle Version Sequence Version Sequence - - A A BAA C AB . AC . . Y . AAB AB BA AC BB . BC . . BA . BB C BC CA . . Etc. . Y Etc. ERROR ESI allows revisions to be padded with any desired character “on-the-fly” as revisioned objects pass through the interface. Removes the need to pad revisions in Windchill just so they will sort properly in the ERP system.

18. 5. Effectivity considerations Key Questions and Issues • How will effectivity be set on the WC Change Activity drive the Oracle system? • Discussion of how effectivity is used in WC versus Oracle • How does your business specify effectivity? (Date, Serial Number, other?)

19. 6. Validation of publications Key Questions and Issues ESI has much more robust error handling logic than RTP. ESI publications are wrapped in transactions that allow publications to be “rolled back” under certain error conditions. This helps prevent indeterminate states. Sub transactions allow intermediate errors to be identified. Both RTP and ESI are sensitive to “hand editing” of BOMs in ERP. Custom logic (developed by BAE Systems) checks for and corrects most “out-of-sync” errors. • How will publications be validated for success/accuracy? • Is the out of box validation functionality of the applications sufficient for your business needs?

20. 7. Multilevel BOM considerations Key Questions and Issues • Current BAE interface is configured to only publish a single level at a time for our implementation. • All items must be available at the proper revisions in the target org in order for a successful BOM publication to occur • Publications of single levels within a multilevel BOM can be made in any sequence, since child items are always automatically published just prior to BOM publication. • Another option is publishing from the bottom up, which adds complexity to the workflow ESI can be configured to publish one or more levels of an assembly.

21. 8. BOM Management Issues Key Questions and Issues • Will View Versions be used? If so special considerations needed in the integration. • Does your business process use a common BOM between Engineering and Manufacturing, or do you use an E-BOM, M-BOM approach? • Do MBOM’s have different business rules than EBOM’s • Which system will manage MBOM’s, which system will manage EBOM’s? • “As Required” quantities and min/max ordering • Managing Substitute parts • Units of Measure – PDMLink allows update, Oracle does not.

22. 9. BOM-specific attributes Key Questions and Issues Reference designators (aka “occurrences”) add SIGNIFICANT overhead to the interface, greatly increasing the amount of data that is processed. Publishing large assemblies with large numbers of reference designators puts a measurable strain on the throughput of the servers running RTP. ESI is significantly more scalable due more sophisticated architecture and Tibco-based underpinnings. This provides more opportunity for system architects to achieve load balancing, scalability and fault tolerance. • Reference Designators add complexity, but are essential in an electronics business • Substitute parts require a customization in the RTP – out of box in ESI • Line Numbers (Item Sequence) required by BAE

23. 10. Mechanics of the out of box interface functionality Key Issues • Item Creation and Item Update • BOM Creation and BOM Update • Oracle ECO’s and implementation • Scheduling of ECO Autoimplementation and Import Requests in Oracle. Workflow considerations and timing issues ESI comes with sophisticated business modeling and mapping tools (see a screen snap on the next slide). ESI is built on top Message Oriented Middleware that is designed for high throughput and fault tolerance.

24. High Level, High Performance Messaging (SOAP over JMS etc) Attribute mapping at the Business Object level. Business rule based process modeling within the interface. ESI’s Graphical Business modeling and mapping tools

25. Demo of BOM Publication Update BOM Review BOM Set Target Orgs Publish BOM Demo

26. Wrap Up • A PDM-ERP integration can be a powerful business process enhancement • In our experience, answering this list of questions thoughtfully and concisely can help get you off on the right foot • These types of systems are highly configurable. Implementations at different businesses may look very different from this example. • Questions?