Introduction to Windchill ESI
Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration (Windchill ESI) is an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) based product, designed to integrate Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) services offered by Windchill PDMLink, with the services offered by distribution targets such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
This end-to-end integration provides real-time connection between Windchill PDMLink and distribution targets. It also supports and enables the transfer and mapping of business objects, such as parts, Bills of Material (BOMs), Configurable Modules, option and Variants Information, Change Notices (CNs), documents and CAD document structures, and manufacturing objects from Windchill PDMLink to the distribution targets.
The following lists specific publishing actions that users can accomplish:
• Create parts, bills of material (BOMs), Configurable Modules, option and Variants Information, documents associated to parts, standalone documents, CAD document structures, manufacturing objects, and change notices (CNs) in the distribution target from Windchill PDMLink.
• Change parts, bills of material (BOMs), Configurable Modules, option and Variants Information, documents associated to parts, standalone documents, and CAD document structures in the distribution target from Windchill PDMLink.
• Capture the publication history for all parts, BOMs, Configurable Modules, option and Variants Information, documents, CAD document structures,, manufacturing objects, CNs and promotion requests in Windchill PDMLink.
With Windchill MPMLink installed these publishing actions can be accomplished on the following objects:
• Process plans, including operations and sequences
• Control characteristics associated to parts, process plans and operations
• Resources, including process materials, skills and tooling
• Documents associated with manufacturing objects, such as operations and resources
• Configurable Module
• Option Set, Options, Choices, Rules, and Assigned Expressions
• Configurable Process plan with assigned expression
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Some ERP systems do not support all of these functions. Check with your administrator to verify the capabilities of your ERP system. For example:
• While a document, a CAD document or its structure that is released from Windchill may be sent with the ESI response, none of these would be published to Oracle Applications. Also, control characteristics associated to parts (or to manufacturing objects) may be sent with the ESI response, but are not published to Oracle Applications either.
• A CAD document structure that is released from Windchill PDMLink may be sent with the ESI response, but only the documents that make up the structure (and not their interrelationships) would be published to SAP.
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Connecting these systems optimizes and automates business processes, improves operational efficiencies, and creates opportunities to add value not available with isolated systems. By controlling seamless information flow between functional groups, such as engineering and manufacturing and their respective enterprise applications, it ensures that:
• Latest product data information is represented in both systems and changes to product data are automatically reflected in the distribution target.
• Latest design revisions are always available to manufacturing.
• Downstream services, such as logistics, finance, after-market support that depend upon and use ERP systems, are also up-to-date.
• Secure end-to-end connection and transaction control are provided, reducing manual data translation and the related maintenance and support costs.
Much of Windchill ESI's business logic runs within TIBCO's ActiveEnterprise product suite, a leading EAI platform. The ActiveEnterprise suite provides TIBCO's BusinessWorks integration services that include prebuilt ERP adapters, an integrated graphical development environment, transaction management, administrative and monitoring facilities, and other functionality.
Using the Graphical User Interface (GUI) based development environment, Windchill ESI can be customized to include unique business processes that are not provided in its default set of functions.
Windchill PDMLink communicates with the TIBCO EAI software through the Windchill Open API. The Windchill Open API enables the product data within Windchill PDMLink to be shared with the rest of the enterprise using industry standards such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Java Messaging Service (JMS), and extensible Markup Language (XML). The services are independent of the EAI software and can be used to enable other middleware applications to communicate with Windchill PDMLink.
Windchill ESI uses business objects that are shared across the enterprise. These objects have attributes that are shared across systems, as well those that are unique to particular systems. Windchill PDMLink is the system of record for all parts, BOMs, documents, CAD document structures and their associated attributes authored in and if Windchill MPMLink is installed manufacturing objects as well.