| # Assembly Planning Sales order entry Sales orders are entered in Order Management for sold products. A product variant is created at sales order entry. By using the Product Configurator, the product variant can be configured. Engineering and product configuration Product structures can be defined in Assembly Planning, an external system, or when using the Product Configurator in PCF. The generic end item, such as a car, is defined. Product Variants product variant A unique configuration of a configurable item. The variant results from the configuration process and includes information such as feature options, components, and operations. Example Configurable item: electric drill Options: 3 power sources (batteries, 12 V or 220 V) 2 colors (blue, gray). A total of 6 product variants can be produced with these options. A product variant is created on sales order entry. An existing product variant can be reused on a different sales order. Flattened parts The content of every module is stored in the flattened parts. The is a one-level BOM consisting of all the assembly parts. The flattened assembly parts can be defined in APL, retrieved from Engineering Data Management, or imported from an external PDM system. Assembly parts requirements calculation The assembly parts requirements calculation process calculates the lower level requirements and sends those requirements to Enterprise Planning. The product variant structure and related flattened assembly parts are input for the assembly part requirements calculation. Assembly order generation Assembly orders are generated and sent to the Assembly Control module. During the generation process, product variant demand, product variant structure and related flattened assembly parts and operations are retrieved. Refresh/freeze assembly orders Assembly orders are frozen within a certain time fence, at the same time, the content of the assembly order is refreshed. In addition to this automatic refresh, there is also a manual refresh before orders are frozen. Unit and date effectivity Unit effectivity is a method to control the validity of variations on an end item. You can use unit effectivity for pegging purposes, or to model exceptions from a standard end item so that you can make variations without having to define separate item codes. As a result, you do not need to maintain separate BOMs for every combination of variations. End items can be, for example, airplanes or touring cars. The deviations consist of relatively small variations of the end item. For example, fitting red seats instead of blue ones, or a special type of radar or air-conditioning, in an otherwise standard type of airplane. You can use unit effectivity to apply changes if: Few changes are made. The changes apply to relatively small subsets of the end item. The changes result from customer requests, engineering, or production. Related topics Refreshing and Freezing Assembly Orders Overview of unit effectivity |