For those who have followed my blog over the years, it must be clear that I am advocating for a digital enterprise explaining benefits of a data-driven approach where possible. In the past month an old topic with new insights came to my attention: Yes or No intelligent Part Numbers or do we mean Product Numbers?
What’s the difference between a Part and a Product?
In a PLM data model, you need to have support for both Parts and Products and there is a significant difference between these two types of business objects. A Product is an object facing the outside world, which can be a company (B2B) or customer (B2C) related. Examples of B2C products are the Apple iPhone 8, the famous IKEA Billy, or my Garmin 810 and my Dell OptiPlex 3050 MFXX8. Examples of B2B products are the ABB synchronous motor AMZ 2500, the FESTO standard cylinder DSBG. Products have a name and if there are variants of the product, they also have an additional identifier.
A Part represents a physical object that can be purchased or manufactured. A combination of Parts appears in a BOM. In case these Parts are not yet resolved for manufacturing, this BOM might be the Engineering BOM or a generic Manufacturing BOM. In case the Parts are resolved for a specific manufacturing plant, we talk about the MBOM.
I have discussed the relation between Parts and Products in a earlier post Products, BOMs and Parts which was a follow-up on my LinkedIn post, the importance of a PLM data model. Although both posts were written more than two years ago, the content is still valid. In the upcoming year, I will address this topic of products further, including software and services moving to solutions / experiences.
Intelligent number for Parts?
As parts are company internal business objects, I would like to state if the company is serious about becoming a digital enterprise, parts should have meaningless unique identifiers. Unique identifiers are the link between discipline or application specific data sets. For example, in the image below, where I imagined attributes sets for a part, based on engineering and manufacturing data sets.
Apart from the unique ID, there might be a common set of attributes that will be exposed in every connected system. For example, a description, a classification and one or more status attributes might be needed.
Note 1: A revision number is not needed when you create every time a new unique ID for a new version of the part. This practice is already common in the electronics industry. In the old mechanical domain, we are used to having revisions in particular for make parts based on Form-Fit-Function rules.
Note 2: The description might be generated automatically based on a concatenation of some key attributes.
Of course if you are aiming for a full digital enterprise, and I think you should, do not waste time fixing the past. In some situations, I learned that an external consultant recommended the company to rename their old meaningful part numbers to the new non-intelligent part numbering scheme. There are two mistakes here. Renumbering is too costly, as all referenced information should be updated. And secondly as long as the old part numbers have a unique ID for the enterprise, there is no need to change. The connectivity of information should not depend on how the unique ID is formatted.
Read more if you want here: The impact of Non-Intelligent Part Numbers
Intelligent numbers for Products?
If the world was 100 % digital and connected, we could work with non-intelligent product numbers. However, this is a stage beyond my current imagination. For products we will still need a number that allows customers to refer to, for when they communicate with their supplier / vendor or service provider. For many high-tech products the product name and type might be enough. When I talk about the Samsung S5 G900F 16G, the vendor knows which kind of configuration I am referring too. Still it is important to realize that behind these specifications, different MBOMs might exist due to different manufacturing locations or times.
However, when I refer to the IKEA Billy, there are too many options to easily describe the right one consistent in words, therefore you will find a part number on the website, e.g. 002.638.50. This unique ID connects directly to a single sell-able configuration. Here behind this unique ID also different MBOMs might exist for the same reason as for the Samsung telephone. The number is a connection to the sales configuration and should not be too complicated as people need to be able to read and recognize it when you go to a warehouse.
Conclusion
There is a big difference between Product and Part numbers because of the intended scope of these business objects. Parts will soon exist in connected, digital enterprises and therefore do not need any meaningful number anymore. Products need to be identified by consumers anywhere around the world, not yet able or willing to have a digital connection with their vendors. Therefore smaller and understandable numbers will remain needed to support exact communication between consumer and vendor.
2 comments
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December 13, 2017 at 8:30 am
Andrey
Hi Jos,
Thank you for your post. It is very helpful for me. I have a question. How will I put material and raw material into EBOM?
Andrey hello, in theory you do not put material in your EBOM. The parts in the EBOM can be make parts, which are unique for this BOM and are created from raw material.
For example sealing strip, sheet metal, pipes are all specified in the EBOM with their unique dimensions. Next when you transfer the EBOM to the MBOM, you will replace these instances with Parts that can be purchased for this EBOM, like 2 meter sealing strip which will be cut in 4 pieces as a manufacturing operation. In the MBOM you will also add materials like paint, grease, etc.
In case you are not using an EBOM-MBOM translation (happens in some industries / cases) you should think more in the concept of the EBOM.
I hope this helps – otherwise send me an email for a more detailed discussion: tacit@planet.nl
Best regards, Jos
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January 1, 2018 at 11:51 pm
Jupp
Hi Jos,
First of all, I wish you a a Happy and Healthy New Year Jos :).
I wouldn’t define a border between parts and products. A product in one organisation is a part in other one. If the you have a worldwide unique identifier, anyone knows the part/product immediately by seeing the identifier. I think, it’s appropriate to have a single (numbering/classification) strategy for all parts and products.
There exists a few numbering/classification systems and standards like eCl@ss, UNSPSC, ETIM, GPC, proficl@ss, DIN 4000 etc. Based on your requirements you may choose each one of them. Have a look at this article (in German) for a short summary of the systems:
Click to access han_klassifikationsstandard.pdf
I prefer eCl@ss as it is becoming one of the main classification systems in the world. The IRDI is the unique identifier number for classification of classes, parts, services, products, attributes, values etc.. You may use the available classes or also create your own company internal classes and keep them internal.
https://www.eclass.eu/en.html
http://www.eclasscontent.com/index.php
eCl@ss is a good classification system and can be even better, if i.a. consider a few object oriented rules. Have a look at following article (in German) for a detail analysis of eCl@ss and a few suggestions. It has been written by my ex-colleagues and me:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320335436_Wissensbasierter_Ansatz_zur_Klassifizierung_im_Anlagenbau
kind regards
Jupp
Thanks Jupp for your best wishes and a happy & healthy New Year to you too. Also thanks for your references to classification systems and at first sight eCl@ss seems impressive (I will study them more). To my opinion classification is crucial for re-use (the old target) and communication (the new target). In the ideal world we should not even talking about IDs anymore as they are used to connect data (IT-driven) where business should communicate around human understandable properties.
For that reason I also differentiate between products and parts as sometimes the same part can have one or more different customers in a different context. For example a spare part has a 70 % margin and is sold per piece. The same part in production has only 4 % margin at that time. For me the product concept is needed to differentiate between these types of usage.
Feel free to start a discussion and we can start a blog post together 🙂
Best regards, Jos
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