Bills of Material

Windchill ESI allows you to publish multilevel Bills of Material (BOMs) that were created or changed within Windchill PDMLink to a distribution target. With Windchill PDMLink, you can configure Windchill ESI to publish specific BOM attributes which can be used to create BOMs. In addition to publishing BOMs and their attributes, Windchill ESI can also be configured to publish created or changed parts simultaneously.

BOMs can include assigned option sets and the associated basic and advanced expressions in the Windchill ESI response depending upon the relevant settings on the distribution target. The saved filter associated with the distribution target is used to arrive at the correct version of the independent expressions for publishing. The assigned expression can also be a driver to publish option and choice information if the relevant options and choices are not already published to the intended distribution target.

When you associate various attributes to a BOM in Windchill PDMLink, Windchill ESI passes these attributes to the EAI software components. The following lists the attributes that are passed:

Once the BOM data has been published to Windchill PDMLink, the EAI software components map the Windchill PDMLink BOM attributes to the BOM attributes of the distribution target. The following table shows the mapping of Windchill PDMLink BOM attributes to SAP BOM attributes.

Windchill PDMLink BOM Attribute	SAP BOM Attribute
Assembly Part Number	Bills Of Material Item Number Name
Date Effectivity	Bills of Material Alternative Date
Component Part Number	Component Item Name
Component Quantity	Component Quantity
Component Line Number	Item Sequence Number
Substitute Part Number	Substitute Component Name
Substitute Quantity	Component’s Substitute Quantity
Distribution Target	Plant
BOM Usage	Usage
BOM Alternate	Alternate
Alternate Item Group	Alternate Item Group

The Windchill PDMLink assembly part (BOM header) iteration is passed to the EAI software components; however, the attribute is not sent to SAP. If the SAP target system that serves as the publishing target is capable of handling Windchill PDMLink BOM iterations, the EAI software components portion of ESI can be extended to pass the information to SAP; however, SAP does not currently have an attribute that can handle iteration information.

The attribute Distribution Targets in Windchill PDMLink identifies the distribution target in which the BOM should be created or changed. The EAI software components use this information to communicate with the correct distribution target and pass plant information to it.

Some attributes are passed to the distribution target from the EAI software components without transformation; however there are a few attributes that contain values that are either modified or cross referenced by the EAI software components.

Windchill PDMLink passes the Start Effectivity Date attribute in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. Windchill ESI assumes that the time zone is configured across Windchill PDMLink, TIBCO, and SAP. The EAI software components remove the time stamp that accompanies the date prior to passing data to the distribution target.

For serial effectivity, Windchill PDMLink passes the start and end serial numbers of the range that was provided as value for the effectivity as well as the associated effectivity context. The EAI software components map the start and end serial numbers to the serial no. low and serial no. high attributes of the serial number effectivity in SAP, where the serial numbers actually belong to the context assembly. The context assembly is created as well, if it does not already exist in SAP.

For lot effectivity, Windchill PDMLink passes the start and end lot numbers of the range that was provided for effectivity but the EAI software components ignore them. This is because SAP does not support lot number effectivity OOTB and needs to be customized in order for this form of effectivity to be supported.

The context assembly associated with the serial (or lot) effectivity should be the assembly that holds the component for which serial (or lot) effectivity is specified in Windchill. If this is not true, and if the preference “Validate Effectivity Context” has a value “Yes”, publication will fail. Also, when publishing serial (or lot) effectivity, if the context object is not part of the release, and if the preference “Include Effectivity Context” has a value “No”, publication will fail; however, if this preference has a value “Yes”, the context object will be automatically included in the release.

By design, Windchill PDMLink does not support changed (updated) Substitutes. The same result is accomplished via Delete and Create actions.

There are some attributes that are required to create or change BOMs that are not provided by Windchill PDMLink. In these instances, Windchill ESI defaults the values in the EAI software components prior to passing the data to the distribution target. The following table lists the BOM attributes that are defaulted in Windchill ESI and their default values.

SAP BOM Default Values
SAP BOM Attribute	Default Value
Usage	1 (Production)
Alternate	01

Windchill ESI includes the capability to send multiple components in a BOM when publishing the BOM from Windchill PDMLink. It can be configured to send line number information for each of the components or use a default value for publishing the line number information to your production system.

When creating components on the BOM, there are a few attributes that are mapped from Windchill PDMLink to SAP. The component attributes that are mapped are listed below:

Windchill PDMLink BOM Component to SAP BOM Component Attribute Mapping

Windchill PDMLink BOM Component Attribute

SAP BOM Component Attribute

Part Number

Component

Quantity

Component Quantity

Line Number

Object Number

Alternate Item Group

The Alternate Item Group is only sent with a component if the component has a substitute.

There are several attributes that are required within SAP to create or delete BOM components that are not provided by Windchill PDMLink. In this instance, Windchill ESI defaults the values in the EAI software components prior to passing the data to SAP. The following table lists the SAP BOM Component attributes that are defaulted in Windchill ESI and their values.

SAP BOM Component Default Values
SAP BOM Component Attribute	Default Value
Object Category	L (Stock Item)
Priority	1 (Primary)
Strategy	2 (100% Check)
Usage Probability	100

Windchill ESI also provides users with the capability to send multiple substitutes related to any or all of the components listed on the BOM when publishing the BOM from Windchill PDMLink. The Windchill PDMLink substitutes are mapped to SAP alternates.

When creating substitutes on the BOM, there are several attributes that are mapped from Windchill PDMLink to SAP. The substitute attributes that are mapped are listed below:

Windchill BOM Substitute to SAP BOM Alternate Attribute Mapping
Windchill PDMLink BOM Substitute Attribute	SAP BOM Alternate Attribute
Substitute Part Number	Alternate
Alternate Quantity	Component Quantity
Line Number	Object Number
Alternate Item Group	Alternate Item Group

There are a few attributes that are required within SAP to create or delete BOM substitutes that are not provided by Windchill ESI. In this instance, Windchill ESI defaults the values in the EAI software components prior to passing the data to SAP. The following table lists the SAP BOM Substitute attributes that are defaulted in Windchill ESI and their defaulted values.

SAP BOM Substitute Default Values
SAP BOM Substitute Attribute	Default Value
Object Category	L (Stock Item)
Priority	2 (Secondary)
Strategy	2 (100% Check)
Usage Probability	1

Windchill also supports publishing reference designators related to components on a BOM; however, because the concept of reference designators as it exists in Windchill does not exist in SAP, the EAI software components portion of Windchill ESI does not support publishing reference designators to SAP.

• Option set information is available in the Windchill ESI response only and the option set will not get included in the SAP out of the box (OOTB). You must customize option set information present in the Windchill ESI response to consume option set information in SAP

When using the object-centric mode of publishing an assembly, with the distribution target attribute Publish Related Documents when Publishing a BOM set to Yes, documents associated to the parts in the assembly are also published.

When publishing an object to a distribution target once again, the information that is sent is based on the information that was previously published. This situation arises if you have an upstream BOM that has been published to a distribution target and there are equivalent downstream BOMs that have not yet been published. If the downstream BOMs are to be subsequently published, you can use the same distribution targets that the upstream BOM used. There is no need to create and associate different distribution targets to the downstream BOMs.

An assembly for Computer A.20 (Manufacturing) has component parts CPU, mouse, keyboard, monitor, and webcam, that were published to distribution targets DT-1100 and DT-1200.The distribution targets were manufacturing plants in the downstream systems

Subsequently, due to business requirements there is a need to create downstream equivalent BOMs for DT-1100 and DT-1200. Now, you can create a child view of the manufacturing view as follows.

Then create the downstream equivalent BOMs—Computer A10 (1100) and Computer A30 (1200)from the upstream equivalent manufacturing BOM Computer, A20 (Manufacturing) as shown in the following figure:

Associate distribution target DT-1100 to the BOM Computer, A.10 (1100) and distribution target DT-1200 to the BOM Computer, A.30 (1200) and publish these BOMs to the distribution targets. Incremental changes are calculated by comparing Computer, A.10 (1100) and Computer A.30 (1200) with Computer, A.20 (Manufacturing) and the BOMs are sent as changed BOMs.

Object	Action	Type
Computer A.10 (1100)	Change	Part and Assembly Part
Monitor A.2 (1100)	Change	Part
Mouse A.2 (1100)	Change	Part
Keyboard A.1 (Manufacturing)	None	Part
CPU B.1 (Manufacturing)	None	Part
Optical Drive A.1 (1100)	Create	Part
All components are appropriately marked as Create/Deleted/Change/None

Object	Action	Type
Computer A.30 (1200)	Change	Part and Assembly Part
Touch Screen Monitor A.1 (1200)	Create	Part
Mouse A.1 (1200)	Change	Part
Keyboard A.1 (1200)	Change	Part
CPU A.1 (1200)	Change	Part
5M Webcam A.1 (1200)	Create	Part
All components are appropriately marked as Create/Deleted/Change/None

This behavior is governed by the property com.ptc.windchill.esi.CalculateDeltaUsingLatestPublishedObject which has a default value of TRUE. To prevent downstream BOMs from being published to the same distribution targets as previously published upstream BOMs, change this property to FALSE. For more information refer to the ESI customization guides.

Windchill PDMLink allows you to publish iterations of a BOM that are not the latest revisions. For example, if P1 B.10 is published to a distribution target and then you want to publish P1 A.15(earlier version) which has not been published to that target before, you will be able to publish the BOM, provided such publishing is allowed by the downstream publishing system. Such publishing is allowed in SAP.