Alias ID

Introduction

A product supplier like e.g. a vehicle seat supplier sells its product to different product manufactures e.g. in the automotive industry. Based on a contractual relationship between the supplier and the product manufacturer, the product manufacturer may be referred to as "Cooperation Partner".

To manage the additional product information of the product manufacturer in the suppliers PLM system, the functionality of the Cooperation Partner is used. This functionality enables the supplier not only to manage its internal product data in the PLM system but also store the additional information like Object Id, Partner name, version etc. of the manufacturer linked to the internal product information. In order to clearly distinguish all the product information of the product manufacturers related to the supplier's product, a so-called "Alias Identifier" (Alias ID) is used. Alias IDs can be assigned to objects (items, documents etc.) and Work Requests/Work Orders. They serve as an identification for an object or a Work Request/Work Order that is used by a cooperation partner. Therefore, an object may have multiple Alias IDs, but only one Alias ID per cooperation partner.

The following diagram depicts the architecture of the main objects in the Alias ID module: