As you plan your Windchill ESI implementation, you should consider the ways in whichWindchill ESI can support your business activities. Thinking about how you wantWindchill ESI to support these activities would also help you decide which configuration options to select and if you need to add any custom functionality.

The following lists high-level decisions that you need to make regarding Windchill ESI’s role in supporting your business processes.

Decide which business scenarios you want to support when integrating your Windchill PDMLink data with your ERP distribution targets. There are many ways in which this integration can provide value to your company and Windchill ESI supports publishing product information from Windchill with pre-built business logic and configuration options. For details on the supported scenarios, refer to the Overview chapter in the Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration Installation and Configuration Guide - Oracle Applications or the Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration Installation and Configuration Guide - SAP. Other scenarios can be supported using theWindchill ESI suite of customization tools. Refer to the Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration Customizer's Guide - Oracle Applications or Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration Customizer's Guide - SAP for details on customization.

Decide which business objects are important to your ERP distribution target. This would help you determine which objects should be published from Windchill PDMLink.

Determine critical attributes forWindchill PDMLink and distribution target system and specialWindchill PDMLink and distribution target business rules related to the objects and attributes.

Determine which application is the system of record for each piece of information. This would also help define what objects and attributes should be published from Windchill PDMLink, and whether any business processes or systematic restriction should be applied within your ERP distribution targets. .

Decide ifWindchill PDMLink would manage your engineering change process. This decision would help determine whether the product information that you publish would be driven by the life cycles of enterprise change notices or the life cycles of parts.

Decide if you want to publish an as-designed or as-planned product structure. By default, Windchill ESI publishes the as-designed view of a product structure. However,Windchill PDMLink supports the ability to manage plant-specific views of product structures. Therefore, it is possible to do manufacturing planning withinWindchill PDMLink and publish the as-planned product structures directly to the plants in your ERP distribution target. Before installing and configuring Windchill ESI, you should decide whether you want to do manufacturing planning inWindchill PDMLink or in your ERP distribution target.

Decide if you plan to customize theWindchill PDMLink business objects to add special attributes or capabilities. If so, you may want to consider publishing these attributes or characteristics to your ERP distribution target.

Determine if you want to explicitly state where Windchill ESI publishes objects, or based on minimal or no input, have Windchill ESI make assumptions about where to publish these objects. For further details refer to the Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration Installation and Configuration Guide - Oracle Applications.

Decide if your business can comply with the design assumptions of Windchill ESI. Review the assumptions and considerations listed in this chapter to understand the design assumptions that are critical to the success of aWindchill ESI deployment. If you are unable to comply with any of the assumptions, you may need to consider customizingWindchill ESI to meet your company's unique needs.

Determine and plan for anticipated data transfer frequency and volume.

Material effectivity is usually used to represent the first time a part has been made available to a plant. It is not used to determine when a new part would be included into a product, and has no impact on MRP runs that generate production orders, etc. This is because effectivity has no real meaning in ERP unless it’s in the context of a next level assembly. BOM effectivity is used to control the actual incorporation date of parts into the built product. BOM effectivity is used in MRP runs, which in turn drive production orders, etc. that are required to build the product.

For part-centric releases, there is no effectivity set on objects. For CN-centric releases, all materials will have effectivity equal to the day the transaction was published; all BOMs will have effectivity equal to the effectivity set in the CN task that had the BOM listed as a resulting item; and the CN’s effectivity in ERP will be equal to the earliest effectivity on the CN. If materials are created or changed, that will be equal to the day of the release.

Once you review these and make your decisions, you will be prepared to make informed choices when configuring Windchill ESI and be able to smoothly integrate the PLM services offered by Windchill PDMLink with the services offered by your ERP distribution targets.