Assemblies / Parts Catalog

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Overview

If your company orders the same materials or produces many of the same prefabs job after job, Catalogs can make that process easier. 

The Assemblies / Parts catalogs are where standards for prefabs and materials are established and ensure consistency across all your Material and Production Orders for all of your projects.

By establishing an Assembly and/or Part catalog, many of the properties of those items can be standardized and better controlled, such as:

  • Name
  • Internal reference ID
  • Category (works in conjunction with the Vendor function to help identify a possible vendor to supply the parts)
  • Sub Category
  • Standard Part/Assembly descriptions
  • Standard Measure Units
  • Vendor information:
    • Preferred and Default Vendors
    • Vendor SKU/Part #
    • Vendor Description
    • Vendor Cost
    • Vendor Lead Time

Once a catalog is established, ordering new prefabs and materials becomes easier and more consistent.

The key element within the Parts catalog is the Catalog ID which is used as the unique identifier for each item added to the catalog.

Two key features of the Assemblies Catalog are:

Parts and other Assemblies can be associated with each assembly from the catalog, and when the assembly is moved forward into a Production Order (both Kit and standard Orders are supported), a Material Order can automatically be created and associated with the Kit Production Order containing those parts.  

    • Please reference the article on Kits for more information on the kitting process.
    • Please reference the article on Planning Packages for more information on standard Production Order workflow.
    • Parts that have been established with a Category and Subcategory will be associated with a vendor when that part is ordered through the Material Management process. Please see the Vendors Knowledgebase article for more information on this process

To fully utilize categories, vendors, and catalog parts, they should be considered, implemented, and added to your system in the following order:

First - Material Categories

Second - Vendors

Third - Catalog Parts

This article covers the following topics:

 

Set-up

The set-up of a Catalog (Parts and Assemblies) requires some level of coordination.  A Catalog ID naming convention needs to be established and can vary depending on the industry and desired use case.

The Catalog ID has three very important restrictions:

  • It can be no longer than 32 characters
  • It can be no shorter than 4 characters
  • Alpha-numeric values are required (with three exceptions)
    • Short Dashes "-"
    • Periods "."
    • Underscore "_" 

These are the only non-alpha-numeric characters allowed.

Note:  Spaces are not allowed and will be replace by periods (.) during 
       initial import.

To create a Parts or Assembly catalog:

  1. Select App & Project Setup
  2. Select Company Profile
  3. Select Assembly / Parts
  4. Select "Type" = Parts or Assembly
  5. Catalog items can be inserted one at a time with the plus button ("+")
  6. A best practice is to develop a spreadsheet with the full catalog in it and then import that into the system when starting. 
  7. Catalog items that are no longer needed can be archived in bulk.  Items added unintentionally, that have not been used in a Material Order or Assembly, can be deleted in bulk.
  8. Items that have been Archived can be revealed so that they can either be restored or deleted from the system. Only those items that have not been used in a Material Order or Assembly can be deleted.

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NOTES:   
     o Initial import of the Parts or Assembly Catalog, that includes 
       a Catalog ID, establishes new items into the catalog.  Subsequent 
       imports will UPDATE those items if the same Catalog ID is imported 
       again.

     o If a parts list is imported without any Catalog ID, Manufacton will
       assign an ID automatically.
          - CAUTION: Importing that list subsequent times will not update 
            any existing entries, but will add those items again With a new 
            Catalog ID.

     o Also note that once the parts are established into the catalog, 
       that assemblies can reference those parts during the assembly 
       import.
                
     o Please see Import Templates Knowledge Base Article 
       for an example template and more on Assembly & Parts import.

     o Assemblies that include sub-assemblies cannot be added as sub-assemblies

Once a catalog is imported, subsequent imports are possible.  Importing duplicate Catalog IDs will serve to change or append any of the existing fields for that Catalog IDs row. 

Assembly Catalog

The Assembly Catalog not only establishes and standardizes the most commonly created prefabs your company manufactures, but it also establishes those parts which make up the assembly and can automatically create Material Orders (BOMs) to ensure those parts are ordered ahead of manufacturing.

To assign Parts to assemblies, first, those parts must be present in the Parts Catalog, then:

  1. Fly open an assembly
  2. Select the Parts sub-tab
  3. Select the plus button ("+") for each part to be associated with the assembly
    • Assemblies can be added as sub-assemblies, those assemblies will be pre-pended with "(assembly").
  4. Begin entering the name of a part in your parts catalog, and then select from the list that is presented
  5. Enter the quantity of parts required for the assembly
  6. Sub-assemblies included as part of Material Requests can be set to be "purchased" or not by default.  See the KB on Material Manager for more information on this feature.

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Parts Catalog

The Parts Catalog provides three critical functions:

  • Establishes the list of possible parts for assemblies to leverage (as seen above in the Assembly Catalog section)
  • Provides a list of available parts to select from for Material Orders
  • Categories and Sub-categories establish which vendors should be considered for fulfilling material orders.

To assign categories to Parts:

  1. Select the Edit (pencil) next to the part
  2. Enter a Category and Sub-category for the part
  3. Identify if the part should be "Purchased" by default or not as part of a Material Order.  See the KB Article on Material Manager for more information on the Purchase function.
  4. Save the part

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  5. Fly out the part
  6. Based on the Category and Sub-category selected for the part, one or more vendors that supply that category are automatically added to the part. 
    • Note: In addition to matching vendors to parts by Category, specific vendors can be explicitly defined during an import of parts to your Parts Catalog. See the KB Article on Import Templates – Parts for more information on this topic.
  7. Multiple "Preferred" vendors can be set for each part.
  8. A single Default Vendor can be set for each part.
  9. The Vendor’s SKU or Part # can be entered
  10. The Vendor-specific description of the part can be entered
  11. The Vendor-specific item cost can be entered (this value is used to help define the total cost of a Material Purchase Order when it is created in the Material Manager module).
  12. The Vendor-specific lead time can be entered (this value is used to help define the lead time of a Material Purchase Order when it is created in the Material Manager module).

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Using the Catalog

Once the system has a catalog, it can be leveraged to help create new Items in Production and Material orders.

Material Orders

In a material order (in Requesting, Sourcing or Ordering):

  1. Select the "Import from Catalog Inventory" icon
  2. Search for the item(s) to be added from the Parts catalog
  3. Check the box for the item(s) to be added
  4. Pick Select
    • Update the quantity of items added as necessary

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Production Orders

In a Production order (Standard and Kit):

  1. Select the Import from Catalog Inventory icon
  2. Search for the item(s) to be added from the Assemblies Catalog
  3. Check the box for the item(s)
  4. Pick Select

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  5. When the Planning Card (Kit or Standard) is moved forward into the Coordination stage, an option to create a bill of material (Material Order) associated with the Assembly is available.  When selected, as an Assembly Production Order is created, each Assembly which has parts associated with it in the Assemblies catalog will have a Material Order automatically created and linked to the production order.  That Material order will have those associated parts listed as items.
  6. A pre-defined Onsite date offset can be established to ensure the material arrives at or ahead of the assembly's production.
  7. In addition, the Materials sub-tab for the production order will reflect the list of parts required to make that assembly

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  8. If the "Create Bill of Materials" option is not checked at this time, the opportunity to create an associated Material Order will be offered again when moving the order from Detailing into Manufacturing.  Set the number of days ahead of manufacturing by which the materials need to be available in the shop.

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Video

View a brief (~9 min) video on this topic:

Catalog ID

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