Additional Capabilities > Windchill Supplier Management > Windchill Supplier Management Administration > Administrative Setup and Configuration Overview > Organizations Representing Manufacturers and Vendors
  
Organizations Representing Manufacturers and Vendors
A supplier organization can be either a manufacturer or vendor, or a combination of both types.
* 
Windchill distinguishes between the administration of supplier organizations and supplier relationships. Supplier organizations are stored in LDAP and they contain general information such as the address, Web site, Organization ID (or CAGE). Supplier relationships (represented by manufacturers and vendors) are only stored in the Windchill database and contain information specific to the relationship between an OEM organization and its supplier organization, such as whether the supplier organization is approved for use.
Adding a supplier creates a new relationship between your organization and a supplier organization. For example, your organization can have its own contact and sourcing agreement with the supplier organization, while another organization within your company can have a different contact or agreement with that supplier organization. In the same way, supplier parts sourced from the same supplier organization can be approved for your organization, but not recommended for another organization.
Consider this information on how Windchill handles manufacturers and vendors:
• A manufacturer or vendor on your supplier list points to a supplier organization.
• The supplier organization can have only one manufacturer and one vendor pointing to it from the same supplier list.
The next diagram shows Organization A that has manufacturers (M1, M2, and M3) and vendors (V1 and V2) added to the supplier list. Notice that each manufacturer (just as each vendor) points to its own organization.
• If your organization has additional subtypes defined for the manufacturer or vendor type (for example, M1_A and M1_B), only one subtype of each type (either M1_A or M1_B) can point to the supplier organization.
• Manufacturers and vendors from different supplier lists can point to the same supplier organization, as illustrated in the next diagram. The diagram shows two organizations, Organization A and Organization B, with respective supplier lists. Notice that a supplier organization can be referenced by two manufacturers only if they appear on two different supplier lists.