Supplier parts are ranked in their relationship to the OEM part to indicate whether the manufacturer or vendor part is approved, preferred, or not used. Typically, a Component or Procurement Engineer assigns the sourcing status to the manufacturer or vendor part.

The initial sourcing status is applied to the part relationship during the part creation or during the initial data loading. It can be changed later for a single part or for a set of parts.

The default values for the sourcing status are Preferred, Approved, and Do Not Use. If needed, additional sourcing status values can be configured by an administrator. See Configuring the Sourcing Status Values for more information.

The sourcing status of supplier parts can differ depending on a geographic location, specifics of a particular product line within the same product family, or environmental compliance regulations.

A sourcing context allows you to take into account these variations and create AMLs and AVLs that are unique to a specific set of conditions. Within another sourcing context, a different AML or AVL can exist for the same OEM part. When viewing the product structure in the browser or in Product Structure Explorer, the sourcing status of parts reflects the selected sourcing context.

To streamline the ranking process of supplier parts, Windchill Supplier Management provides you with the tools to assign the sourcing status to AMLs and AVLs in a bulk process. The Sourcing Administrator can define the rules for assigning the sourcing status to a set of manufacturer or vendor parts.

Rules can specify a sourcing status value for a selected supplier within a selected sourcing context. If you have both Windchill PartsLink and the classification structure installed, you can select a classification node to define a set of parts to which the rule applies.

Sourcing rules also impact the sourcing status of supplier parts (which can be changed) when you create an AML/AVL.