Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

Abstract: ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is a set of integrated and integrated large-scale information management system. This paper discusses the application of "product data management" in E RP system.

1 preface

Nowadays, regardless of the scale of enterprises, the computer has become an indispensable application tool, and a lot of work has been left to the computer to do. The "flow of people", "logistics" and "information flow" throughout the enterprise are more organized under the deployment of computers and networks. This is exactly what ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system advocates to make the best use of things, reduce unnecessary intermediate links, so that resources can flow to every corner of the enterprise more reasonably, efficiently and smoothly. Fundamentally speaking, the difficulty of ERP system is not programming itself. How to straighten out the complicated working relationship in the enterprise, provide an efficient communication platform for each department and everyone, and maintain the good expansibility and maintainability of the software is the key.

A good ERP system should control the source of data. Almost all the production data of an enterprise flows from the design department: including part drawings, group (department) parts drawings, final assembly drawings, technical conditions, BOM, Spec ifi- cation, etc. (figure 1 shows the work between the general enterprise design department and other departments). It is this little bit of data that converges into a big river of enterprise data resources, and how to "manufacture standard data" is the focus of this article.

2 nomenclature and specification of units

For the same kind of parts, we may find many names for it, for example: "bottom shell", "bottom plate", "base" ⋯⋯is really a variety of, in fact, as long as you seriously trace back, they all refer to the same kind of materials. However, when designing parts, designers may not carefully verify the original names of such parts, but just give them a name according to their own understanding. There is no doubt that the consequences of doing so have led to data confusion.

This intentional or unintentional error is not allowed, and here we provide a solution:

1. Provide retrieval of classified material names and material template pictures for designers to take the initiative to classify

2. Add a data entry control point. Control all names can only be entered selectively, new material category names can only be applied first and then selected, and there must be relevant personnel in the middle. Although this adds some links, it basically ensures the "purity" of the material category.

A similar phenomenon is also shown in the unit name of the material. To take another example, the same part "sealing tape" is found in the BOM file in terms of "10 volumes", "volume", "m", "cm", "g" and so on. This is not necessarily the fault of the designer, it may incorporate the opinions of many departments: the "purchasing department" is settled with the supplier on the basis of "10 volumes"; the "warehouse manager" is settled on the basis of "volume" and "material picker". According to the different working places, the "craftsmen" think that it is more reasonable to take "m", "cm" and "g" as units in their process documents, or it is more convenient for the "finance department" to carry out cost accounting.

BOM (Bill of Materials) is the leading document for running the ERP system, and all business departments of the enterprise should work according to a unified bill of materials. It is to accept customer orders, determine assembly parts, calculate cumulative lead time, work out production and procurement plans, complete materials collection, track logistics and production process, trace the source of tasks, calculate costs, bid quotations, improve product design and other important documents to refer to. Therefore, the accuracy of the bill of materials is very high.

It can be said that the debate about whether the unit should be unified or not has a long history, which does not seem to be exactly the same as the unification of the material name. In fact, the management information system is still in the MRP II stage, and it has already made a similar division to BOM as follows:

BOM (Engineer BOM) As Design for design

BOM (KIT BOM) As Purchase for purchase

BOM (Manufacture BOM) As Manufacture for production

Plan to use BOM (Forecast BOM) As Forecast

BOM (Sales Modular BOM) As Sales for sales

BOM (Cost BOM) As Cost for cost

In the above BOM file, we can use different units to meet different requirements. The key point is whether each different BOM is associated with a "unified bill of materials" and whether all data (or after unit conversion) are consistent in quantity at the same time. If this is done, the unit problem will not be a problem.

3 intelligent query of parts specifications

It is believed that people with certain working experience in an enterprise can find that some parts, especially accessories (such as sponges, packing boxes, etc.), can always find some materials with different codes, but the sizes and specifications are more or less the same. even the same parts, and these small differences can be eliminated. In other words, under the premise of generalization, many materials can completely replace their similar materials, and apply to more products.

Why did this happen? As a designer, whenever he designs a new product, he also hopes to be able to select parts from existing materials that can meet his design requirements. But he will soon find that in the face of a huge database, looking for borrowed materials among hundreds of drawings of parts is tantamount to looking for a needle in a haystack, and the end result may be nothing. This greatly reduces the efficiency and enthusiasm of designers, and eventually they will consider ignoring the original materials and redesigning all the parts. In this way, it will inevitably lead to some data similarities (redundancy), and will be bigger and bigger like snowballs. A few years later, when we want to downsize them, they are already intertwined in all kinds of production guidance documents, and the foreseeable impact on the production order will deter us from doing anything.

How to reduce data redundancy? Do you rely on people to guard the gate? It is impossible for anyone who reviews drawings to be familiar with thousands of parts specifications. Do you rely on the computer to check? To make a complete distinction between the two parts, all the specifications of the two parts, including size, color, materials, technical requirements, etc., must be compared. First of all, this requires that all its characteristics must be entered, which will occupy a large amount of storage space and affect the speed of the network; secondly, the intelligence of the computer is limited, it can not well distinguish whether the text expression in the technical requirements is completely different. Generally speaking, the maneuverability of relying solely on computers is not strong.

Only by providing an efficient and intelligent query and comparison system, can we meet the query needs of daily design work. After inputting several (1 ~ 4) from the main specifications (5 ~ 10) of each part, the number of parts queried can be limited to a reasonable range, and the link with 3D modeling design and two-dimensional drawings can be established for designers to choose from. So that the designer can know the query results in a very short time, and can quickly import the query parts and verify them in the design. This should be a more acceptable solution for designers! However, the establishment of such a query system is often ignored by most enterprises.

4 changes to general-purpose parts

To some extent, the degree of generalization and standardization of parts can be used to measure the technical management level of an enterprise. The more single the variety of parts is, the easier it is to ensure the processing quality; the easier it is to automate production and increase output; the inventory of raw materials can be greatly reduced and easier to manage. In the "cost is king" market economy, this is undoubtedly very competitive.

The benefits of good generalization to enterprises are self-evident, but we sometimes have to face a very thorny problem, that is, the change of universal parts. Of course, universal parts are not allowed to be easily changed. Therefore, we often send some warning messages through the computer when the technician changes the common (borrowed) parts drawing, indicating that the drawing is a common (borrowed) part, and shows the product model borrowed from this part. At the same time, when outputting the change order of this kind of parts, it is also marked as "common (borrowed) parts" in a conspicuous position to further remind the examiners.

However, with the progress of technology and technology, universal parts are sometimes replaced, and we sometimes have to take the initiative to take this step. This should be called a technological transformation project in an enterprise, which aims to reduce costs, improve performance, and ultimately improve the market competitiveness of products. In the ERP system, we enter a common part number and we may find hundreds of products to borrow from it. Then changing a general part drawing means that thousands of drawings (part drawings, assembly drawings, final assembly drawings), BOM files and related fixtures must be changed. While completing such a large amount of picture and text changes in a short time, we must also take into account the performance of the product and the assembly structure of the product, any oversight may cause great confusion, which is a challenge for anyone!

We can adopt some compromises: add a material code to the new material, and the new material code is prefixed before (after) the general part material code to be changed as a temporary code. This is an idea of gradual replacement, changing all product drawings and related documents in batches and in time. This requires a long process in which both new and old materials exist. In the unchanged drawings and documents, we still use old codes and old materials, which will not have an impact on the production of these products, but will only gradually digest the inventory of old materials. After reasonable planning, all the old materials can be used. At this time, batch processing can be used to remove the prefix (suffix) of the new material code, and finally replace the position of the old material.

This scheme only aims at the changes of parts with strong versatility, and for the general parts that involve small areas, we do not have to bother so much. After implementing the opinions on the disposal of old products, we can issue all the technical documents at the same time.

5 conclusion

With the rapid development of computer application, the adoption of computer-aided design technology and advanced information management technology is the only way for enterprises to renew and improve the competitiveness of products.

PDM (Product data Management) is an integrated management technology based on software technology and with products as the core to realize the linkage of data, processes and resources related to products. All of its information organization and resource management are carried out around product design. PDM provides enterprises with a mechanism and technology for macro-management and control of all product information and product-related processes. According to foreign statistics, the application of PDM can shorten the product design cycle by 25%, reduce engineering design modification by 4%, speed up the product launch schedule by 50% ~ 80%, and reduce the total cost by more than 25%.

With the development of enterprises from small to large, the importance of data management will become more and more prominent, and the data will gradually accumulate to an amazing order of magnitude. If we only think of organizing and optimizing "PDM" at this time, it will already be a mending after a sheep is lost. At this time, the cost will be double that of the initial implementation of ERP, and the effect may not be ideal. More and more enterprises begin to realize the importance of "PDM" system, especially some large and medium-sized enterprises, the development and application of their "PDM" products have entered a period of rapid development. In fact, a lot of data is not terrible, terrible is the chaotic data. Only when we really manage and standardize the data, can we make the data serve us better!

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