PTC enhance WC to manage phantom parts which change to material components and vice versa. OOTB "Panthom Manufacturing Part” attribute functionality has to be altered to mange panthom behavior at individual view level instead of master level.”
Refer Case #13953241
Below are the major points/reasons why the phantom manufacturing part designation in Windchill should be applied at the individual view (aka plant) level rather than at the master level.
1. The SAP MRP system that Boston Scientific uses (and a lot of other companies use as well) handles the designation of a phantom assembly at the individual plant level. In other words, if two plants (aka views) of a part exist, SAP will allow one of the plants to designate and use the part as a phantom assembly and the other plant to use it as a standard assembly. Having the phantom assembly designation in Windchill at the “master” part level completely contradicts how our MRP system handles it.
2. Boston Scientific often has multiple plant’s building parts. These plants are located in various places across the world and as a result our production lines are configured differently at each plant. One plant may choose to build a series of separate assemblies where as another plant may choose to collapse those assemblies into fewer builds by designating some of them as phantom assemblies. We have many cases at Boston Scientific where one plant wants to use a part as a phantom assembly and another wants to use it as a regular assembly; however, Windchill out of the box will not allow this because the phantom manufacturing part designation is at the mater level of the part. To address this, Boston Scientific created an additional attribute located on the view level of the parts in hopes of bypassing the Phantom Manufacturing Assembly master level attribute.
3. Boston Scientific’s solution of creating an additional attribute located on the view level of the parts to bypass the Phantom Manufacturing Assembly master level attribute (as described in 2 above) doesn’t fully solve the problem either. In the cases stated above in number 2 where two plants build the same part and one wants to treat it as a phantom and the other does not, the standard assembly parts need to be able to be allocated to a process plan operation and the phantom assemblies do not need to be allocated. Windchill bases what it allows to be allocated on the master level phantom manufacturing part designation. This results in IT having to intervene to change the master level phantom manufacturing field on and off as needed by the business.
4. As result of the IT intervention described in number 3 above, the business experiences extra work because the operations teams has to contact IT and IT has to change the master attribute. Additionally it adds delays in getting updates made and could result in delays in producing or developing product. See below for the related cost BSC incurs.
