Numbering in Windchill

[HugoHermans]

Has anyone practical experience or considerations about finetuning the
numbering of objects in Windchill?

Recently, someone suggested to enhance our actual out-of-the-box
numbering with a prefix :

PRxxxxxx for problem reports
ECRxxxxx for change requests
...

The suggestion I got in particular was to reflect the softtyping of
WTdocuments in the numbering :

QMxxxxxx for Quality Manuals
ISIRxxxxxx for an 'initial sample inspection report'
....

TIA

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Kindest regards,

Hugo Hermans

-

NV Michel Van de Wiele
Michel Vandewielestraat 7
8510 Kortrijk (Marke)
Tel : +32 56 243 211
Fax: +32 56 243 540
BTW BE 0405 450 595
RPR Kortrijk

[AL_ANDERSON]

At Solar Turbines, we prefix document numbers with an abbreviation by
type. In PDMLink, we have adjusted the autonaming function to prepend
that prefix by type, as well. The only document that we do not prefix
with an abbreviation is engineering drawings. Drawing just use numbers.

We have not had to do that with change objects. However, when referencing
a change object in some other documentation using text, people put "CR" or
another similar abbreviation in front of the number to distinguish it from
other change objects with the same number. It might make sense just to
put the prefix in the number for the change object, too. We just haven't
done it.

Al Anderson







Hermans Hugo <->
05/06/2010 04:25 AM
Please respond to
Hermans Hugo <->


To
-
cc

Subject
[solutions] - Numbering in Windchill




Caterpillar: Confidential Green Retain Until: 06/05/2010



Has anyone practical experience or considerations about finetuning the
numbering of objects in Windchill?

Recently, someone suggested to enhance our actual out-of-the-box numbering
with a prefix :
PRxxxxxx for problem reports
ECRxxxxx for change requests
...
The suggestion I got in particular was to reflect the softtyping of
WTdocuments in the numbering :
QMxxxxxx for Quality Manuals
ISIRxxxxxx for an 'initial sample inspection report'
....
TIA

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Kindest regards,
Hugo Hermans
-

NV Michel Van de Wiele
Michel Vandewielestraat 7
8510 Kortrijk (Marke)
Tel : +32 56 243 211
Fax: +32 56 243 540
BTW BE 0405 450 595
RPR Kortrijk


Van de Wiele Company or its affiliates do not accept legal responsibility
for the contents of this message. The views or opinions presented are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Van
de Wiele Company or any of its affiliates.



Site Links: View post online View mailing list online Send new post
via email Unsubscribe from this mailling list Manage your subscription
Use of this email content is governed by the terms of service at:

[HugoHermans]

Hi Al,

Thank you, that's exactly what I'm thinking about, prefixing document
numbers. I still hesitate a little, since we already have a lot of
documents in Windchill without prefixes 😞

Some other practical considerations : do you have one number generator
for all WTdocuments, or does every softtype have its own numbering?
Have you aligned the total length of characters emong the different
softtypes? I tend to standardize on 12 characters in total, with 2 or 4
prefix alfabetical characters, each its own numbering. Any thoughs?


Met vriendelijke groeten,
Kindest regards,

Hugo Hermans

-

NV Michel Van de Wiele
Michel Vandewielestraat 7
8510 Kortrijk (Marke)
Tel : +32 56 243 211
Fax: +32 56 243 540
BTW BE 0405 450 595
RPR Kortrijk

[AL_ANDERSON]

Huge, and Solutions List,

Here is what we are doing in PDMLink 9.1, which we are converting to in
Nov 2010 for production use from Windchill Foundation 8.0 (hightly
customized).

We have created 9 document numbering sequences.

5 of them start from 50,000; the rest of them start from 5000.

We have various combinations.

1) Certain Soft Type Documents have 2 or 3 character Prefix and 5 or 7
digit autogenerated number.
2) Certain softtype document expect the end user to fill in the document
number
3) The rest uses just the autogenerated number (10 digits) without the
prefix.

Al Anderson
Solar Turbines Incorporated





Hermans Hugo <->
05/06/2010 01:08 PM
Please respond to
Hermans Hugo <->


To
-
cc

Subject
[solutions] - RE: Numbering in Windchill

[HugoHermans]

I've got one additional response, see below. Thanks for the input.

Hugo.

<< ProE WF3 M190 - PDMLink 8.00 M040 >>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I see it as somewhat similar to “smart” part numbering, which I highly recommend not doing.

BUT, I think this is not a bad practice what you show below, but I wouldn’t take it much further – in other words I wouldn’t try to describe the document any further than that . . . . that’s a rabbit hole you don’t want to go down – that’s of course why you have attributes to help describe things (and hence don’t need “smart” numbering).

Recently I had a customer mention changing the numbering of Change Tasks to be “WTXXXXX” because it was kind of confusing to see another number inside the ECN, especially since the numbers were very close to each other (though that would change over time as they processed more and more).

In retrospect, when I was a Windchill Admin, I probably wish I had done just a little more of what you describe below, if nothing else it is a huge training aid so that when people see all these new types of objects flying by them it’s at least obvious at first glance WHAT it actually is – it’s difficult to tell inside of Windchill sometimes if you are looking at an ECR, ECN, Promotion Request, etc. so I kind of like what you show below. I personally don’t see any negatives as long as you don’t go much further with it.

[djmertz]

I've created several types of soft type documents with each one having
different ORACLE sequences to identify the documents. Because the
different documents numbers have different prefixes, they do not
inferfere with each other. The Admin manual shows how to add
Sequences that can then be used for autogenerating your numbers.