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Agile Product Lifecycle Management Product Governance and Compliance User Guide Release 9.3.3 E39296-01 |
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# 2 PG&C Application Components

There are various client platforms used by Oracle Agile PLM. The list below is specific to the PG&C solution.

## 2.1 Agile Java Client

When Agile PLM was installed at your company, PG&C may have been fully or partially configured. Your Agile PLM administrator, working in the Administrator module in Agile Java Client, have further configured the solution:

- End-users like yourself have been created in the PLM system with assigned roles and privileges;

- PLM business classes have been set up so you can create PG&C-specific objects, such as Substances, Specifications, and Declarations;

- Manufacturer companies that furnish your company with manufacturer parts and subassemblies, and Supplier companies that furnish your company with compliance-specific information have also been configured.

Note: It is possible that your Agile PLM administrator has renamed classes or subclasses as they were named "out of the box" and as they are named in this manual. The administrator may have also created additional subclasses, per the business needs of your company.

End-users do not work in Java Client for PG&C.

The first Appendix in this manual, Configuring PG&C, pertains to the PLM administrator and Java Client configurations.

## 2.2 Agile Web Client

Compliance managers and other users at the Buyer company work in Agile Web Client. This manual is concerned with PG&C-specific functions and objectives.

Getting Started with Agile PLM is the primary guide to Web Client use, as well as cross-solution features like Workflows, Searches, and Reports.

## 2.3 Modified Web Client Interface

Your information suppliers also log in to Web Client but their assigned role dictates that the user interface that they use - the Basic Supplier UI - is greatly simplified from the version that you use. A chapter in this manual covers working with suppliers, and the Basic Supplier UI is documented in PG&C Supplier Guide.

## 2.4 Microsoft Excel-based Client

Some customers of PG&C may want to install the Microsoft Excel-based client, which uses predefined Excel templates to facilitate performing certain tasks. The second Appendix is this manual, Configuring the Excel Client, pertains to this installation.

A template is available for an information supplier to complete JGPSSI declarations. A template is also available for the buyer to perform Substances and Weights rollups in Excel.

It is also possible to create custom templates in Microsoft Excel; you can create Excel templates for any of the declaration classes in Agile PG&C. For more information, see your PLM administrator, or contact your Oracle Consulting - Agile Practice representative.

The Microsoft Excel-based Client requires:

- Windows desktop,

- Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, to log in to Web Client, and

- Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 (Excel 2003, 2007, and 2010).

Note: Some companies do not permit their employees to download ActiveX controls to their desktop computers. Therefore, the Microsoft Excel-based Client may have to be implemented by the IT department of your company via a "push approach": this automatically pushes the ActiveX control out to users' desktops. Otherwise, your company can get the ActiveX or Plugin installer from the Agile Support website and install it on users' desktops.

## 2.5 PG&C Classes of Objects

This section gives brief summaries of the Agile PLM business objects used in the PG&C solution. In this context, "business object" simply refers to those entities that you can see in the product record.

All of the types of objects mentioned here are fully documented in succeeding chapters of this manual.

### 2.5.1 Substances Classes

Four kinds of substances are represented in PG&C:

#### 2.5.1.1 Substance

Defined as a "chemical element and its compounds in the natural state or obtained by any manufacturing process." Substances are part of materials, components, or products. There can be a distinction between intentional substances, which are present in the product to fulfill a certain function, and unintentional substances, such as impurities.

Example: Aluminum - Al or Al2O3

#### 2.5.1.2 Substance Group

A grouping of substances that have a Base Substance in common. Every substance within the substance group has a Conversion Factor used to convert the weight of the substance to the weight of the base substance of the group.

Example: Aluminum and Aluminum Compounds - this group has a base substance of Aluminum and includes other Aluminum-based compounds.

#### 2.5.1.3 Material

A mixture or solution composed of two or more substances that is used to create standard or custom parts.

Example: a roll of sheet metal made out of a certain Aluminum alloy

#### 2.5.1.4 Subpart

A part within the BOM of a component. Standard components to electronic products such as chips, resistors, motors, or electrical cables all consist of subparts.

Consumers of components think of components as indivisible objects. When they need to think about the BOM of a component, they use the term subpart (a part without a part number). The manufacturer of the component cares about the BOM of a component and will represent the subparts as parts in his systems.

A subpart can be homogeneously made of one material (for example, the plastic jacket of a cable), or a subpart can be made of multiple homogeneous materials (for example, the lead frame of a chip, which is a subpart, consists of the frame itself made out of one metal and the lead frame plating).

#### 2.5.1.5 Homogeneous Materials

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### 2.5.2 Specifications

Specifications track the different legislations, customer specifications, or internal specifications with which an assembly or part must comply. The Specifications object is used to create representations of specification documents, regulations, published compliance criteria. You will very likely hold the actual (electronic) document as an attachment to a specification object.

An example of a regulation issued by a government body is the European RoHS directive. Environmental specifications are substance-based, and contain a list of banned substances or substances of concern and their threshold values.

In Agile, specifications are used to validate declarations and assess the compliance of parts by evaluating whether a given restricted substance in the composition of a part surpasses its specified threshold value.

### 2.5.3 Parts and Part Groups

Object types - base classes, classes, and subclasses - describe the structure of business objects found in Agile PLM. All objects created in PLM are an instance of a single subclass. (Remember, your PLM administrator may have added subclasses that are not named in this manual, or renamed classes or subclasses from what they are called in this manual.)

Items is the base class that is parent to the Parts and Documents classes, which are parents to the Part and Document subclasses, respectively. Parts, documents, and other subclasses can represent the components of products made by your company.

Manufacturer Parts can represent products made by other companies that your company purchases to assemble its products.

- As a shorthand, this manual uses the word "part" to refer to all objects from the Parts, Documents, or Manufacturer Parts classes.

The Part Groups class is used to group similar parts. Subclasses are Part Family, Commodity, and Item Group. However, the subclass used most often in PG&C is the Part Family.

- This manual uses "part group" for any object in the Part Groups class.

Therefore, the phrase "parts and part groups" (or the notation <Part/PG>) comprises "any kind of part used in my company's manufacturing process."

### 2.5.4 Declarations

A declaration is the main object of record in the PG&C solution. Declarations are used to gather compliance information about items, manufacturer parts, and part groups.

A declaration is a record of questions posed by a compliance manager to an information supplier about the supplier itself, its products, or how its products comply with given specifications. Upon completion, it contains the supplier's responses to the questions.

Also, declarations keep track of all the substances, substance groups, homogeneous materials, and subparts that are contained in parts and part groups. This record of substance-specific information is the basis of the Bill of Substances.

Here are two schematics of a general declaration, one at a simple level and one with more elements added.

## 2.6 Conceptual Entities in PG&C (non-business objects)

This section gives brief summaries of certain concepts, that is, entities that are not created and modified by users but are important all the same. These are also detailed later in this manual.

### 2.6.1 Bill Of Substances

A Bill of Substances (BOS) is a tree structure, like the BOM. It consists of:

- Subparts - zero or more levels, and then ...

- Materials - zero or 1 level, and then ...

- Substance Groups - zero or 1 level, and then ...

- Substances - zero or 1 level.

There is much more to cover about the Bill of Substances; see Chapter 6.

### 2.6.2 Compositions and Levels of Disclosure

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#### 2.6.2.1 Compositions

Declarations can contain multiple parts. When an information supplier responds to a declaration, all information related to a single part within the declaration is called a Composition.

More specifically, a composition is the aggregate of a supplier for a given specification and for a given part (that is, an Item and its Revision or a Manufacturer Part) or part group.

This means that a declaration is a container of not only "parts/part groups" but also their collections of compositions.

Compositions are detailed in Chapter 4.

#### 2.6.2.2 Level of Disclosure in Compositions

Compositions can be Fully Disclosed, Partially Disclosed, and Undisclosed. These are states stored on the composition:

- Full Disclosure: when 100% (or close to 100%) of the weight of each level in the BOS up to the part's weight is declared within a composition in terms of chemicals;

- Partial Disclosure: when there is enough weight information available within the BOS and the part for the system to calculate the unreported weight portion of the substances;

- Undisclosed: if weight information is missing so PG&C cannot perform its validations.

  Agile PG&C validates the level of disclosure in the declaration.

  For more information about the levels of disclosure, see Mass Disclosure.