Enterprise Administration > Windchill ESI > Introduction to ERP Connector > Administration Tasks > Managing ERP Connector Distribution Targets > Defining Distribution Target Assignment Strategy > Explicit Distribution Target Assignment
  
Explicit Distribution Target Assignment
Explicit assignment is an association between a distribution target and an object that can be published. Explicit assignments persist in Windchill PDMLink and can be viewed in the user interface. You are responsible to identify and maintain the correct associations before the objects are published.
For example, when we apply this assignment strategy to the multi-level product structure in the preceding figure, assembly 100-A is published with the following results:
• Part 100-A is published to distribution target 1
• Parts 200-A and 400-A are published to distribution target 1 and distribution target 2
• BOM 100-A is published to distribution target 1 with two components, part 200 and part 300
• BOM 200-A is published to distribution target 1 and to distribution target 2 with one component, part 400
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Unless part 300 has been created in the distribution target by a previous publishing activity, the request fails in the distribution target when attempting to create BOM 100-A. Part 300 is not created for distribution target 1. As a general rule, every component of an assembly must be assigned to all of the distribution targets that are assigned to the assembly. The components may also be assigned to additional targets; however, in order to publish a component part successfully, such targets should belong in the same ERP Connector destination(s) as those that are assigned to the parent assembly. Also based on the organization that the object belongs to, an object can have a default distribution target assignments upon triggering its publication.
The failure associated with the creation of BOM 100-A, as described in the above paragraph is actually with respect to the actual destination ERP system that the data is eventually published to. In other words, it applies to a case where the product is configured to use closed loop transactions.