Revision Handling in Windchill - BOM Filter

[DF_8011468]

Perhaps somebody more experienced with Windchill can help me:

We switched from another PLM system to Windchill and I learned, that the revisions of Items/Parts in a BOM are defined by Filter and can be different by user.

Why???

Typical you build an assembly with special revisions of part and it should be able to add an old revision of a design part into a new assembly. But with Windchill not.

Why???

Or how do you work with revisions?

[BenLoosli]

Why would you want to put an old revision of a part into a new assembly? By nature, a revised part is form, fit and functionally equivalent to its older revisions. No need to sue an older revision.

The BOM structure display in Windchill is a reflection of the CAD structure in your design system. Since it is a display, different users can define the display to their needs. I have 2 structure displays in Windchill. one is the OOTB and the second displays our part description parameters which are designated in Creo and uploaded to Windchill. There are many options that users can play with in customizing the Windchill displays.

[DF_8011468]

I am coming from the ECAD world, where a new Revision of a PCB is NOT form-fit-function to the previous revision.

It takes several weeks until a PCB is build and assembled and sometimes when we have some old boards available, we want to assemble them with some other components...

And therefore following happens:

PCB (Blank-Board)   |    PCA (Assembled Board with BOM Structure incl. PCB)

Rev.001                    |    Rev.001   (complete new design)

Rev.002                    |    Rev.002   (Redesign - PCB and PCA change)

Rev.001                    |    Rev.003   (BOM change for Rev.001 as there are still some parts available to assemble but with some other components )

Rev.003                    |    Rev.004   (Redesign - PCB and PCA change)

Rev.004                    |    Rev.005   (Redesign - PCB and PCA change)

Rev.003                    |    Rev.006   (BOM change, as the Rev.004 PCB is not working)

And especially when you have a PCB, you cannot assemble everything, because the components pads are missing, sometimes the board size also or other things.

And therefore it is important to have a clear assignment between a special PCB revision to an special PCA revision.

[BenLoosli]

If all your revisions are against the same part number, how do you keep track of which revision to ship to a customer for a replacement if they only order by the part number?

A little confusing for the assembly line to keep track of rev 002 for this assembly but this other assembly uses rev 004.

[DF_8011468]

We have different states (accepted for prototypes builds NOT shipped to customers) and released for parts possible to ship.

We have also different attributes, like Qualified and other were we document, which revision can ship to customer.

Also what happens when an old revision is return from customer we add some notes in Windchill, if the board can repaired or need to update to a newer revision.

And we have several labels with QR-Codes on the parts itself, so the assembly line can easy track what they build.

Mainly with Windchill we have the issues, to not see the correct revisions.