Industry Demonstration of Manufacturing Engineering Collaboration
Standards for Product Data Exchange
Constant pressure to reduce costs and increase return on investments by freeing fixed assets utilized in manufacturing has driven an increasing number of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to outsource an ever-broader scope of their production. Outsourcing to electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers, which operate at lower margins, has proven so efficient that the EMS companies have been the fastest-growing segment within the electronics industry in recent years.
As OEMs consign manufacturing functions outside their own companies, they are faced with the challenge of transferring product development and engineering expertise to their EMS partners. The OEM/EMS relationship is similar to the relationship among engineering, marketing and manufacturing divisions within a single company, and the concepts and problems associated with the exchange of information between OEMs and EMS providers are similar to those a company has internally with its own manufacturing divisions. The problem is compounded, however, by the existence of a multitude of different systems among trading partners. Numerous information systems must interact throughout the manufacturing process. Manufacturing resource planning (MRP), product data management (PDM), engineering collaboration, quality control and warranty entitlement systems must all link together. This can be a challenge within a single company and becomes even more difficult when communicating among several companies.
The type of information exchanged between OEMs and EMS providers goes beyond order fulfillment and financial transactions. Electronic data interchange (EDI), while sufficient for order management and fulfillment, is not suitable to exchange the kind of manufacturing engineering data required for close collaboration between OEMs and their EMS providers. Partners must be able to share information relating to engineering design, management of approved vendor lists (AVLs), initial load and change management of the bill of materials (BOM), quality information and the exchange of "as-built" or product genealogy manufacturing information for warranty entitlement. This information includes proprietary intellectual property, making the security and integrity of the data extremely important.
To establish effective information exchange, OEMs and EMS providers have had to use leased lines, firewalls, routers and other equipment. With each OEM typically having own set of systems, exchange procedures often had to be derived on a partner-by-partner basis. Some OEMs developed their own proprietary systems and required each EMS partner to adopt to their standards. While this assisted the particular OEM, it did not address the problems from the EMS perspective. The burden of cost associated with the EMS provider catering to each OEM’s requirements increased costs even to those OEMs that provided proprietary ways of interfacing.
To further explain the cost involved in setting up manufacturing relationships between OEMs and EMS providers, let’s examine what happens in the initial stages of the relationship. An OEM will typically select an EMS provider based upon a variety of reasons, from cost to performance. Once the OEM has selected an EMS company to manufacture its product, engineering information must be exchanged in order for the EMS company to manufacture the selected product or product lines to the OEM’s desired specifications and within acceptable quality limits. This requires sharing computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) files; defining the approved components and their source of procurement, commonly known as the approved vendors list (AVL) and approved manufacturers list (AML) for the product’s subcomponents; plus any applicable engineering notes or other pertinent data necessary for manufacturing the product according to cost, quality and performance parameters.
Since each relationship is unique, some OEMs will provide engineering data that only specifies the AML and the EMS provider, through use of its existing sources, will provide and manage the AVL. In other cases, OEMs may have negotiated special pricing with certain vendors and control a portion or all of the AVL. The complete listing of all the components of the product comprise the BOM. The BOM, together with the AML, AVL and customer-driven performance and quality metrics provides enough information to determine manufacturing costs. Production information is far from static; there are often daily changes that need to be communicated among business partners. A change in suppliers causes changes to the AVL. Engineering changes may cause direct changes to the BOM, which may or may not result in additional or different manufacturers and/or vendors. Collection and analysis of quality information can result in vendor disqualification for a particular part. Parts manufacturers are constantly refining and improving their offerings, resulting in revision changes. The product life cycles and availability of a particular supplier’s product offerings can change based upon demand or technology innovations, causing additional changes in the flow of data. All of this information changes on a day-to-day basis.
Previously, information exchange was accomplished via email, FTP and conference calls. Information was manually installed in each trading partner’s BOM management system, and required changes were made manually in each system. (Due to the indented structure of a BOM, EDI is not a viable option for exchanging this type of detailed information.) The manual entry of information was time intensive and created errors, inhibiting collaboration and increasing costs.
Virtual Factory Project Addresses Need for Standards
In 1998, the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) established the Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project (VFIIP), co-led by Intel, Celestica and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to address the problems faced by electronics manufacturers and their supply chain partners. The industry’s leading OEMs, EMS providers, vendors and solution providers joined forces to develop uniform interfaces that will enable the communication of product content information more efficiently and cost effectively across the supply chain. When adopted as industry standards, these product data exchange (PDX) interfaces will allow the exchange of engineering collaboration information, new product information (NPI), BOM management information plus quality, work in process (WIP), "as-built" information and more.
The project is working closely with the standards organization IPC and the industry consortium RosettaNet to ensure standardization of the interfaces developed by VFIIP. The proposed PDX standards are based on XML (extensible mark-up language), the universal format for structured documents and data on the Web.
IPC established the 2570 series of supply chain communication standards for the specifications generated by the Virtual Factory Project. VFIIP’s PDX standards, along with other standards suites such as the 2510 series for CAD-to-CAM data exchange and the 2540 series for shop floor communication, provide manufacturers with a standard approach to robust, negotiation-free technical data exchange. The suite of PDX and related standards can be found at www.gencam.org/html/standards/standards.html. Proposed PDX standards currently in the IPC review process are:
IPC-2571 Generic Requirements for Supply Chain Communication
This sectional standard provides an "overview" of the entire suite of standards for supply chain communications. It also describes how PDX is expected to work in conjunction with other related standards and formats. The IPC-2571 Data Type Definition (DTD) comprises the complete DTD structure for the entire IPC-2570 series.
IPC-2576 Requirements for Supply Chain Communication of As-Built Product Data
This sectional standard defines how manufacturing product genealogy information · the build history of boards and final assembly · is exchanged. All characteristics of the product are represented as well as its serialization, lot information and how it was manufactured. This information may be used to support products through the life of the equipment.
IPC-2578 Requirements for Product Design Configuration
This sectional standard facilitates quote, manufacture, configure, test and kit interactions among supply chain partners. It defines an XML encoding scheme, which enables a total product definition to be encoded at a level appropriate to facilitate supply chain interactions. An encoding scheme is defined for bill of materials (BOM), approved manufacturers list (AML), approved vendors list (AVL), changes (engineering, manufacturing, product), and references to documents describing geometric and other part characteristics.
The initial PDX standards specifications are currently available for industry comment, and IPC expects them to achieve formal standard status this June. VFIIP’s next step is to initiate standards focusing on quality (IPC-2577) and WIP tracking (IPC-257x), which are expected to be introduced in the second quarter of 2001.
Although the VFIIP standards were derived from experiences in the electronics manufacturing industry, they apply to manufacturing in general. NEMI’s VFIIP has coordinated closely with IPC and RosettaNet to achieve a notably high level of technical integration across these three organizations. Considerable effort was made to ensure consistency of naming conventions and structure between the IPC standards and RosettaNet’s dictionaries and Partner Interface Process™ (PIPs™) specifications. Specifically, the IPC PDX suite is being leveraged into RosettaNet’s Cluster 2 (relating to distribution and update of production information) and Cluster 7 (relating to the exchange of technical data for manufacturing) PIPs, several of which directly reference the IPC standards as attachments.
The following RosettaNet Cluster 2 PIPs correspond to the proposed IPC-2578 standard and have recently been ratified by RosettaNet:
PIP2C1 Distribute Engineering Change Status
This PIP informs an engineering change requester of the status of an engineering change being implemented by an engineering change stakeholder. It enables a stakeholder to modify the disposition of an engineering change, and then notify the engineering change requester of the change in status. A change in status can occur anywhere along the business path of the engineering change. When the engineering change status is modified, the disposition must be provided (via this PIP) within three days.
PIP2C2 Request Engineering Change
This PIP enables a party proposing an engineering change (change requester) to send an engineering change request to a change review forum, and the change review forum to respond to the request. The change requester submits an engineering change request when a stakeholder identifies an opportunity or problem requiring an engineering evaluation. The change review forum responds by either accepting, rejecting, or pending the engineering change request. If the change review forum responds (via this PIP) that the engineering request is "pending," then the change review forum must later use PIP2C3 (see below) to provide a final disposition (approve or reject) to the request. The final disposition must be provided within three months after completion of this PIP.
PIP2C3 Distribute Engineering Change Response
This PIP resolves a pending engineering change request by sending the change review forum’s final disposition (approve or reject) to the party that submitted the request (change requester).
PIP2C4 Request Engineering Change Approval
This PIP enables a change review forum to request a decision stakeholder’s approval of an engineering change, and a decision stakeholder to respond to the request. (A decision stakeholder is the party that holds approval responsibility for engineering changes.) PIP2C4 can be used to obtain a response from a decision stakeholder who belongs to an organization external to the change review forum. The decision stakeholder may respond directly to the request or forward approval responsibility to another party. Approval responsibility includes a number of possible responses, including approve, reject, and waiver. It is not required that PIP2C2 be executed prior to using this PIP.
PIP2C5 Notify of Engineering Change Order
This PIP enables a change review forum to notify a stakeholder of the purpose and contents of an engineering change order (ECO). The ECO notification includes a full description of the ECO and any associated documents. Optional text and documents may either be attached to the notification or accessed through uniform resource locator (URL) links embedded in the notification. Upon receiving ECO information from a change review forum, a stakeholder may begin to plan and take actions necessary to implement the engineering change.
PIP2C6 Notify of Engineering Change Implementation Plan
This PIP enables coordination of engineering changes throughout the supply chain by providing the means to send engineering change implementation plans to the stakeholders who are responsible for performing or updating the status of a planned task. An engineering change implementation plan is a flexible document that may be iteratively updated to organize and track the individual tasks necessary to implement an engineering change order (ECO). Either a stakeholder or change review forum may create an engineering change implementation plan for a given ECO. Once an implementation plan is created, any stakeholder can add tasks at any time prior to the completion of all tasks in the plan. To support individual management of tasks, each task in the plan has its own owner, due date, and status. This PIP is usually executed when the status of the ECO associated with an engineering change implementation plan is "Approved."
Prototype Demonstration
Several VFIIP participants recently demonstrated use of the proposed IPC-2578 and RosettaNet 2C1-6 PIPs to exchange manufacturing information among supply chain partners. The objectives of this demonstration were:
- To demonstrate the capabilities of the new RosettaNet 2C PIPs™ in meeting the industry needs for the initial load of an engineering BOM initial loading and subsequent ECO management.
- To ensure industry support by engaging multiple OEM participants and cross-vendor support for standard exchanges based upon the IPC PDX standard suite.
- To demonstrate the use of the IPC PDX suite in "real world" BOM transfers.
- To demonstrate that this technology is available to be used today to lower costs, reduce errors and reduce implementation time.
Organizations participating in the demonstration were: Agile Software, Extricity, Georgia Institute of Technology, Intel, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Netfish Technologies, Nortel Networks, PTC and SCI Systems.
Two specific PIPs · 2C5 and 2C2 · were chosen to demonstrate the capabilities available through use of RosettaNet’s new manufacturing PIPs.
PIP 2C5 was utilized to transfer and load a BOM from Intel and Nortel (representing OEMs) to EMS provider SCI Systems and Georgia Tech (acting as an EMS company for purposes of the demonstration). For the 2C2 PIP transfer and demonstration, NIST performed the functions of a distributor or supplier.
Extricity B2B™ was utilized as the B2B gateway for Intel. PTC Windchill was utilized as the B2B gateway for Nortel. Netfish Technologies provided their XDI Server to Georgia Tech and NIST for purposes of the demonstration. SCI utilized Netfish Technologies’ Secure Gateway and XDI Server as their B2B gateway. Agile Software provided their Agile Integration Server and Agile Anywhere products to Georgia Tech for the purposes of the demonstration. (SCI utilizes Agile Integration Server and Agile Anywhere currently within its production environment.)
Intel extracted two different BOM sets of information from its internal proprietary PDM system utilizing the IPC-2578 PDX format. The BOM was then sent to Intel’s B2B gateway provider, Extricity. Extricity sent the initial BOM load utilizing PIP2C5 with IPC-2578 attachment to each of the EMS providers, SCI and Georgia Tech via B2B gateway software provided by Netfish Technologies. The BOM was then interfaced from Netfish internally to Agile Software, which is the PDM system installed at each of the EMS locations. The BOM was successfully transferred and loaded into the systems. Utilizing the proper RosettaNet 2C5 PIP protocol, Intel was then notified of the successful receipt and handling of the BOM information.
Similarly, Nortel extracted two different BOM sets of information from their internal proprietary system again using the IPC2578 PDX format and sent them successfully through PTC to Netfish utilizing PIP 2C5 for load into Agile Software systems described above located at SCI and Georgia Tech.
To demonstrate the ability to generate an engineering change request (ECR), PIP2C2 was utilized. Mimicking a common occurrence between supply chain partners, NIST sent a PIP2C2 request for engineering change based upon obtaining a better price on a different part that was an element of each of the BOMs. This information was transmitted to each of the EMS providers and back to the OEMs through the respective B2B software where approval was returned via the 2C2 PIP. The corresponding acceptance completing the 2C2 PIP process was transmitted back down the supply chain, effectively changing the BOM.
The ability of the different vendors to implement the standard to exchange proprietary information via a standard protocol cannot be over-emphasized. What would have taken weeks to manually input and change information in each of the supply chain partners’ internal systems was accomplished in a matter of minutes of transfer time.
Moving Forward
Cluster 7 PIPs (currently under development) will allow the exchange of "as-built" factory floor information, collaborative design and quality information reporting. These PIPs, along with additional work being done on new cluster 2C PIPs, will continue the collaborative efforts with IPC and leverage the IPC-2570 series of standards. The time taken to implement these PIPs are more than offset by leveraging existing XML trading partner exchanges versus having to implement a singular solution with each trading partner.
The following are some of the many benefits derived from planning and implementing the existing and developing PIPs based upon the IPC standards:
- Loading without manual mistakes of BOM information (completed).
- Management of AVL and AML information (under RosettaNet development based upon IPC2578).
- Collaborative updates and approval process tracking of ECOs (completed).
- Information reporting in real time of work in process (under development).
- Warranty entitlement information from "as-built" information reporting. (under RosettaNet development based upon IPC-2576).
- Tracking of quality information within the manufacturing process (under development).
- Loading of catalog information for use in BOMs and in response to requests for quotes (under RosettaNet development based upon IPC-2571).
- Ability to include engineering notes, CAD/CAM design information, or other information that can be attached and used in the decision making processes.(completed).
The adoption of the IPC and RosettaNet standards is expected to help companies achieve significant savings over previous methods of information exchange.
See Also