Enterprise Administration > Implementing Windchill ESI > Implementing Windchill ESI in an SAP Environment > Windchill ESI Assumptions > Creating and Changing Parts (Objects)
  
Creating and Changing Parts (Objects)
The following lists assumptions related to creating and changing parts:
All plants being sent fromWindchill PDMLink are valid plants in SAP. If a plant is not valid in SAP, object export fails and an error is returned to Windchill PDMLink.
Alternate parts are supported for the current release of Windchill ESI. However, SAP does not support them for parts. If you need alternate parts support within SAP, you must add appropriate business logic, data mapping, and API functionality to support the alternate parts.
With a certain setting in place, control characteristics associated to a part (together with the related model items) are processed, regardless of whether the part is released as a standalone object, or in association with an assembly, a change notice, a process plan or a promotion request; and with the Publish Alternates attribute set on the distribution target, control characteristics associated to an alternate part are processed as well.
Documents associated to parts (and to the associated ERPMaterial objects when appropriate) are processed with separate functionality. The functionality is available for all part and BOM processing.
Only one primary business object can be created or changed from a single Windchill ESI response message from Windchill PDMLink. For example, if the Windchill ESI response message fromWindchill PDMLink is for parts, only one part can be created or changed during that transaction. However, if the response message is meant to create or change a BOM, multiple parts can be created or changed during the transaction.
Parts fromWindchill PDMLink do not have part numbers greater than 18 characters and names greater than 40 characters.
Material master records are created or changed in SAP within a specific plant or as a non-plant specific material.
Material master exists in the organization it is to be updated in.
Windchill PDMLink and SAP data match before the material master is updated in SAP.
If a part is associated to an existing BOM in SAP, the unit of measure of that particular part is not changed.