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I am wondering where the practical limit of "document" management in Windchill is. How far do I take this? Right now, my visibility is to Engineering documents, numbered objects and project related data used in product development. Beyond the horizon, there is a whole nother set of documents generated in operations and supply chain. These can include in process build records, supplier material data, test runs, images, data extracts. Many times these could be PDFs, scanned paper, output files, Zips of files.
I am not concerned with the number of files or the size of the files. I assume we can managed those limits. My question revolves around the benefits to just loading all data in PDMLink aligned with our projects and programs. Some of this data is not well organized so creation of a some auto numbering system would be needed. The goal would be to replace many folders and storage locations to make one stop for all data. The issue that is racking my brain is some of this relates more to transactions in SAP rather than traditional objects in PDMLink.
Example would be a purchase part on a BOM. We may purchase this many times throughout the year for various programs. Each purchase would come with certs and paperwork for that part which must be reviewed and stored. This has no relationship directly to the Part object, is more related to a purchase order transaction. Build data and test data does relate to a product but again, relates better to a work order or test run then to the Part in question. Is this a bridge too far?
I think I would lean towards keeping this kind of "transactional" information in an ERP system.
The one exception that I could foresee would be if the end items were serialized in Windchill. Then you may want to gather all the information together that went into the making of a specific serial number.
just my 2 cents.