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mass re-number

MikeLockwood
22-Sapphire I

mass re-number

We have a new parent company (gradually has taken effect over the past 2 years).We will be transitioning to anexisting world-wide single instance of SAP.


With mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, etc. has anyone had to deal withmass re-numbering?


It is nowproposed by the SAP project team that we re-number ALL PRODUCT DATA to align with existing SAP Numbering conventions, with all product data and change management numbering assigned by SAP sequence (rather than Windchill). This currently affects Windchill data of: 50,000 WTPart masters, 200,000 WTDocument masters, 1,300,000 CAD Doc masters. In addition, every viewable seems like it would need to be republished. In addition, every CAD Doc that has any reference to any other Number via tables, balloons, etc. would need to be regenerated.


We are being asked to estimate what would be required.We can't see how this can possibly be done.

6 REPLIES 6

Hi Mike,


You can do the bulk renumbering of the Objects by writing a utility which changes the name,number,filename of the CAD doc.This utility will take a input excel which has oldNumber,newNumber,oldName,newName,oldFileName,newFileName columns as the input and will do renumber one by one calling Windchill API's for renumbeing.


To republish every iteration for each revision of the CAD doc to be renumbered make sure that the property "publish.republishonepmdocumentchange" is set to true in wvs.properties. This will Republish all the objects which you provide for renumbering to the above utility.


Regards,


Karan Narang

I just did this last week. We had a Data Cleansing effort. After go live (or part of go live), I extracted a numbers that changed and new descriptions (limited to 40 characters) and ran a rename job against PDMLink. Took a few hours to complete. I have a custom util that reads in number/new name against various objects.

I see I handled the easy part. Republishing will take some time but can be batched. Little user interaction but massive CPU time. Recommend installing more background MS and a huge number of CAD workers to handle load, pair down when done. If the tables were parametric, republishing will fix them.

Mike,


From a system perspective renumbering everything is entirely possible, just time consuming and inconvenient. From a business perspective there are much more serious implications. Speaking as a veteran of many data migrations I probably have some advice to share, I need a little more information first though.


Could you give a little more detail on why you are being asked to re-number everything?


Are there existing materials (analogous to wtparts) in SAP for “your” stuff? By that I mean are there already records in the SAP system with transaction history for data that you are currently controlling in Windchill?



In Reply to Mike Lockwood:



We have a new parent company (gradually has taken effect over the past 2 years).We will be transitioning to anexisting world-wide single instance of SAP.


With mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, etc. has anyone had to deal withmass re-numbering?


It is nowproposed by the SAP project team that we re-number ALL PRODUCT DATA to align with existing SAP Numbering conventions, with all product data and change management numbering assigned by SAP sequence (rather than Windchill). This currently affects Windchill data of: 50,000 WTPart masters, 200,000 WTDocument masters, 1,300,000 CAD Doc masters. In addition, every viewable seems like it would need to be republished. In addition, every CAD Doc that has any reference to any other Number via tables, balloons, etc. would need to be regenerated.


We are being asked to estimate what would be required.We can't see how this can possibly be done.




-----

Lewis

I would classify this as a data migration project and expense /capitalize it
appropriately during the estimation process. It sounds like it is a case
of using ERP for PLM.



Which system has the intelligent, non intelligent part number?



Is there an option for you to renumber the wtpart only?






Mike,


From the sounds of things you have already realised that if there are no existing records in SAP then there really is no value to the business in changing the numbers on your data. More importantly your existing numbers will almost certainly be used extensively in lots of critical places. E.G:



  • Your existing business (ERP or MRP) system on things like Work orders and Manufacturing Routings, plus Sales Orders, Invoices and other customer facing documentation.

  • In product and Engineering documentation, like test procedures, service manuals, drawings and catalogues.
    More importantly I am pretty sure you must have been marking the physical parts with your part numbers, and the shelves holding inventory and lot locations etc will also use these same numbers.

  • Most of the above are critical from an audit perspective, and included in that there is the issue of how you handle work in progress through the shop floor while completing the re-number.

  • Finally how are you planning to keep a cross reference between your old and new numbers? I am almost certain that would be a requirement with supporting legislation for a medical device?

Just updating Engineering documentation is a very expensive proposition and at the end of the day, adds no value, you are not going to save any time or money, or make your products better or more marketable as a result of updating the number. All it does is absorb resources, realistically it should be pretty straightforward to get this communicated to your management and just getting accurate costs for the "changeover project" should quickly turn everyone off the idea. I recommend you get involvement from your manufacturing and QA folks on the proposal before you do any more investigation from an Engineering perspective.


A more strategic approach might be to add a field to materials in SAP like “Old Part Number” and store your existing numbers in there and leave all your documentation alone. So you have a cross reference to the SAP number from “your” number. We had a group on SAP at Weatherford that adopted this approach, we did a bit of research about deploying ESI to integrate our Windchill installation with it, and it is possible to do using that model (just not that easy). Something else to consider would be to consider storing the SAP number on the Windchill record in some way, either as an attribute or perhaps as a supplier/manufacturer part number. So that you can search in Windchill using either number and return the same thing.


Good luck with the project whichever way you go.




In Reply to Mike Lockwood:



We have a new parent company (gradually has taken effect over the past 2 years).We will be transitioning to anexisting world-wide single instance of SAP.


With mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, etc. has anyone had to deal withmass re-numbering?


It is nowproposed by the SAP project team that we re-number ALL PRODUCT DATA to align with existing SAP Numbering conventions, with all product data and change management numbering assigned by SAP sequence (rather than Windchill). This currently affects Windchill data of: 50,000 WTPart masters, 200,000 WTDocument masters, 1,300,000 CAD Doc masters. In addition, every viewable seems like it would need to be republished. In addition, every CAD Doc that has any reference to any other Number via tables, balloons, etc. would need to be regenerated.


We are being asked to estimate what would be required.We can't see how this can possibly be done.







-----

Lewis

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