## Understanding Product Data Management

This chapter discusses:

- Product Data Management overview.

- Product Data Management features.

- Product Data Management tables.

### Product Data Management Overview

To understand the critical role that product data management plays in the business, you must understand the ways in which product data affects businesses and how businesses can more efficiently track, manage, and maintain product data.

Today's customers want specialized products and short leadtimes from ordering to the delivery of a product. Manufacturers want to respond to the pressure and opportunities that are presented by their customers' needs. The industry currently struggles with manual paperwork, slow response times, lack of systems integration, and product volume versus complexity. Manufacturers need agility to provide specialized products at competitive prices.

To be agile, manufacturers require a method of creating and maintaining critical product information. Manufacturers must then communicate this critical information to the rest of the organization. A company's sales, manufacturing, and service organizations need a fast, accurate, and reliable system. With today's integrated systems, product data management is crucial throughout the organization. Creating product data that meets the needs of various groups and insures accurate data within the organization is vitally important.

The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Product Data Management system enables you to integrate all of the aspects of product data with the rest of the business operations. This system provides basic data for other manufacturing systems. You need to verify that the product data is accurate to ensure the efficiency of associated systems, such as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Shop Floor Management and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Requirements Planning.

Accuracy of bills of material, routings, and work center information is essential to the system's overall integrity. Accuracy can be increased and maintained by cross-functional teams if they review new products, product changes, and process changes, as well as bills of material, routings, work center information, and the engineering change management process.

The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Product Data Management system lets you track the fundamental information that is required to manufacture components, subassemblies, and end-item products. It includes bills of material, routings, work centers, and engineering change management.

Product Data Throughout the Organization

Bills of material (BOMs), routings, work center information, and engineering change management are used throughout an organization. Although the manufacturing facility is the primary user of routings and work centers, and the bill of material was originally intended for engineering purposes, they are now critical inputs to other areas of an organization. Engineering change management is a tool that is used throughout the organization to communicate changes to product data.

Manufacturing engineers use bills of material to develop and communicate manufacturing requirements, and to indicate how and in what order the product should be built. Work centers are defined and manufacturing routings are then developed. To enhance planning and decrease leadtimes, components on a bill of material are attached to a routing operation step to identify where specific material should be issued and consumed in the manufacturing sequence of the product.

Accounting uses bills of material and routings to run a cost roll-up. From the cost roll-up, you can determine the cost of the product and then determine the product price.

If you sell configured items, you use the bills of material that are created for features and options to create an overall bill of material and routing for the final configured item. The engineering change order (ECO) notifies you of changes to product features and options. If significant changes are required, the customer can be notified about any changes to the features and options of the final product.

Material planners, who usually drive planning and inventory control within the company, use bills of material to determine what manufactured and purchased items are required. Routings and bills of material are used to determine when, where, and what quantities are required to produce parts, and what resources and work centers are required to complete the work orders.

When a work order is created, the engineering bill of material becomes the parts list on the work order. The stockroom uses this parts list to pull parts for the work order. Components are issued to the work order so that inventory is relieved.

After the work order and parts list are issued to the manufacturing floor, the product is manufactured or assembled. A bill of material might also be listed on the engineering drawing that is issued with the work order.

Building the product while cross-referencing the bill of material on the drawing and the parts list attached to the work order:

- Ensures that the part is manufactured to engineering specifications.

- Verifies the accuracy of the bill of material.

The service department uses the parent/component relationships in bills of material to determine what parts need to be stocked for warranty and replacement parts.

Types of Manufacturing

Discrete, process, and repetitive manufacturing all use bills of material and routing instructions. The bills of material contain individual parts or components, such as nuts, bolts, wire, plastic, or metal parts of a fixed or variable quantity. Products can be broken down into subassemblies that go into various larger assemblies. The routing instructions include the operations to be performed, their sequence, the various work centers involved, and the standards for setting up and running the operations.

All types of manufacturing use the term item for both the raw materials and finished goods. Not all items are planned, scheduled, or produced in their primary unit of measure. To accommodate this fact, full unit of measure capabilities are enabled throughout the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Shop Floor Management system. Most entry programs have a Unit of Measure (UOM) field next to the quantity fields. The unit of measure is stored in the database tables with the quantities.

Throughout JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Shop Floor Management, the system uses the values in three fields in the Item Master table (F4101) as default values in entry forms:

- Component Unit of Measure

- Production Unit of Measure

- Primary Unit of Measure

The value in the Primary Unit of Measure field must be the smallest of the three units of measure.

Discrete Manufacturing

Discrete manufacturing is typically characterized by:

- Work orders produce a specific quantity of a single item for a specific completion date.

- Routing instructions are a series of independent operations.

- Components can be manually issued with the release of the work order, backflushed at completion of the work order, or both.

Discrete manufacturing is most often used in these manufacturing environments:

- Make-to-stock, using either a highly repetitive or process order-based system.

- Any of the to-order strategies, such as make-to-order, assemble-to-order, or engineer-to-order.

- The one-off or job shop environment.

Discrete manufacturing is used to produce items such as:

- Cars

- Furniture

- Electronics

- Airplanes

Process Manufacturing

Process manufacturing is typically characterized by:

- Work orders produce multiple items, both co-products and by-products, for a specific completion date.

- Routing instructions are a series of dependent operations that work together continuously.

- Products are often produced in batches or with a continuous process.

- Components or ingredients are often stated in terms of a recipe or formula.

- The quantities of components or ingredients can vary according to their grade or potency.

- Components or ingredients can be issued by preflushing with the release of the work order or backflushed at the completion of the work order.

Process manufacturing is most often used to produce:

- Pharmaceuticals.

- Foods and beverages.

- Raw materials such as lumber, metals, and fluids.

Process manufacturing uses one of these processes:

- Batch processing: a product is usually made in a standard run or lot-size that is determined by vessel size, line rates, or a length of standard run.

  Items are typically scheduled in short production runs due to the life cycle of the product after its completion. Typical items might be pharmaceuticals, foods, inks, glues, oil or chemical products, and paints. A co-products and by-products list might be generated during batch processing.

- Continuous processing: the production period is typically extended, using dedicated equipment that produces one product or product line with slight variations.

  This method of manufacturing is characterized by the difficulty of planning and controlling variances in quantity and quality yield. Typical items might be petroleum-based products or distilled seawater. Co-products and by-products are generally more prevalent in continuous processing than in batch processing

Strategies that are similar to discrete manufacturing, including repetitive or any of the to-orders strategies (such as, make-to-order, assemble-to-order, or engineer-to-order) might be used to control the process.

Usually, both batch and continuous processing methods require extensive record-keeping. You must track quality and tolerance values during the process, as well as strictly adhere to lot tracing and lot tracking. You use lot tracing to display the items that are assigned to a lot. You use lot tracking to display the items that are removed from a lot.

Repetitive Manufacturing

Repetitive manufacturing is typically characterized by:

- Entire production lines are dedicated to a family of products.

- Product families share similar components and routing instructions.

- Products are often manufactured in a continuous process that requires less inventory movement to and from the production line.

- Work center setup and changeover times between related products are minimized.

- Production is defined in units per hour. The time spent at the operational level might or might not be important. Therefore, you must be able to set up line capacity and define routing instructions in units per hour at the line level. The fundamental basis for backscheduling and capacity planning is hours. To view information in units, the system uses a conversion factor defined at the work center level.

- Visual cues, called kanbans, control material movement. Kanbans represent predetermined quantities of components at specified locations on the production line. They are designed to minimize work-in-process inventories.

### Product Data Management Features

The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Product Data Management system includes:

- Bills of material

- Work centers

- Routing instructions

- Engineering change management

Bills of Material

The bill of material is the primary method for defining and communicating the structure of the product. Although there is no single correct way to structure the bill of material for a product, you can follow some general industry guidelines. These guidelines assist you in determining and developing the levels within the bill, creating part numbers, defining phantoms, and setting up other bill of material issues.

The bill of material was traditionally created, maintained, and used only by the engineering department. However, as bills of material take on new and increasingly important roles within a company, remember to create bills of material that support the needs of all departments. This action eliminates the need to create several different types of bills of material to support the various needs within the company.

Use bills of material to:

- Enter multiple bills of material to maintain many arrangements for an item without creating additional part numbers.

- Access items online by using the item description as search criteria.

- Define quantities of intermediate products in any unit of measure as they progress through the manufacturing process.

- Enter similar items by copying bills of material, routing instructions, and processes; and changing only the information that is unique to each item.

Work Centers

Work centers are the specific, physical locations on the shop floor where routing operations occur. A work center defines basic information such as the machines and number of people employed at the work center. Additional information can include work center rates for labor, machines, and setup, work center capacity, machine utilization, and labor efficiency.

Use work centers to:

- Define work center number, description, and link to business unit.

- Define queue and move times.

- Define operator, machine, and capacity by hours per day.

- Define rates for setup, labor, machine, and overhead.

- Define information for Capacity Planning.

- Define where an item is produced.

Routing Instructions

A routing lists the operations that are required to manufacture a product in sequential order. Each operation within the routing identifies specific information such as the work center and time standards for setup, machine run, and labor hours. Routing operations can also include additional information such as required tools and inspections. Each part in a bill of material can be linked to a routing operation to identify the specific routing operation where a part should be issued from inventory and consumed by the product.

Use routing instructions to:

- Define each step of the manufacturing process with allowances for anticipated yield and scrap for each operation.

- Add alternate operations to routing instructions.

Engineering Change Management

Engineering change management is a general term for the engineering change request (ECR) and ECO processes. Engineering change management is sometimes called engineering change notification (ECN).

The ECR process defines and tracks requested product changes. An ECR is created, reviewed, and approved. It then becomes an engineering change order. You use engineering change management to create, plan, review, approve, and implement product changes. New designs or products can be included in the ECO process or go through a similar process called engineering creation order. ECOs usually include changes or enhancements to existing products. ECOs can also include process specifications. For example, the engineering department might specify a product assembly method that must be followed. Changes are generally made to products to resolve quality and safety issues, or to improve product performance.

Use engineering change orders to:

- Control item changes from a single source.

- Incorporate approved changes to bills of material automatically.

### Product Data Management Tables

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Product Data Management uses these tables:

Table | Description
Business Unit Master table (F0006) | Stores branch, plant, warehouse, and business unit information, such as company, description, and category codes that are assigned to that entity.
Workday Calendar table (F0007) | Contains workday types for month, year, century, and shift of each branch/plant.
Address Book Master table (F0101) | Stores all address information pertaining to customers, vendors, employees, and prospects.
Work Center Master File table (F30006) | Contains labor, machine, and overhead rates for each work center.
Work Center Rates File table (F30008) | Stores work center rate information, such as simulated and frozen rates for setup, labor, and machines.
Bill of Material Master File table (F3002) | Stores information at the business unit level about bills of materials, such as component requirements, quantity per, issue type, revision level, features and options.
Routing Master File table (F3003) | Stores information about routings, including work centers, operation sequences, yield percentages, and run, setup, and machine time. The system uses this information to calculate labor, machine, and overhead costs.
Work Center Resource Units table (F3007) | Stores daily and monthly capacity information for work centers at each branch by shift.
Manufacturing Constants table (F3009) | Stores general branch/plant information, such as bill of material validation, commitment control, work hours per day and shift, and costing options.
Bill of Materials Change File table (F3011) | Stores all changes to any bill of material, including dates, ECO reasons, and effective dates.
ECO Parts List Detail table (F3013) | Lists the parts that are affected by the ECO.
Component Locator File table (F3015) | Stores the location of a component that you define within a subassembly.
Kanban Master table (F3016) | Stores the set of kanban cards that are associated with an item. Each kanban defines the supplying location, consuming location, quantity, and unit of measure. The system uses next numbers to control the kanban identification number. If the system obtains the item from an external source, the supplier's number is included.
Kanban Card Detail table (F30161) | Stores information that is related to the kanban, such as status, transaction quantity, and date updated.
Work Order Routing table (F3112) | Contains the routing steps for work order or ECO implementation.
Item Master table (F4101) | Stores basic information about each defined inventory item, such as item number, description, category codes, and units of measure.
Line Type Control Constants File table (F40205) | Stores constants for maintaining line types, such as general ledger classification, order type, and record variance.
Item Manufacturing Data table (F4101M) | Stores manufacturing data for each item, such as leadtime, document type, and issue type code.
Item Branch File table (F4102) | Stores the warehouse or plant-level information for an item, such as costs, quantities, category codes, and physical locations.
Item Location File table (F41021) | Stores all inventory locations for an item.
Item Cross Reference File table (F4104) | Stores information that enables you to relate item numbers for a specific purpose.
Work Order Master File table (F4801) | Stores the work order and rate schedule information, such as item numbers, quantities, dates, and status.
Order Routing Approval Master table (F4808) | Contains the address book numbers for the people who are responsible for approving ECOs and the order in which those people should be notified.
WO Supplemental DB User Defined table (F48092) | Stores additional information about ECOs, such as implementation costs.
Order Approval Audit table (F4818) | Contains the approval history of an ECO.