Processing of Concepts 

Purpose

In the early phase of product development, a functional product structure is developed from the requirement structure. The variable states of a product are modeled as variants. Structure nodes with the different component variants represent the variable states in the product structure.

The following activities are characteristic of this engineering process:

·        The product model becomes more and more detailed. Development engineers look for possible solutions – to new customer requirements for existing products, and in ongoing projects, for example. However, the results of the research department also suggest various ideas for solutions during the development stage.

·        Engineers must analyze and test each possible solution. The results are described in different documents. At a later stage, a solution may prove to be feasible, and the knowledge and data gained so far becomes valid for the product structure.

This process of finding a solution is supported in the iPPE product structure by concepts. You can check different possible solutions for component variants in a goal-oriented engineering process. All the data that arises from this process (such as CAD drawings, material data, and alternative structures) can be stored in context in the system as concepts, and integrated in the engineering process.

Integration

For the definition of the product structure, you use Integrated Product and Process Engineering (iPPE).  Choose the following path: Logistics ® Central Functions ® Engineering ® Product and Process Engineering ® Product Designer.

Special node types for the processing of concepts have also been defined in Customizing. Choose Production ® Basic Data ® Integrated Product and Process Engineering.

See: Concept Group

Features

Defining Concepts for Implementation Options

You bundle all implementation options for a component variant in a concept group. You maintain one implementation option in a concept. You can maintain any number of concepts for a component variant.

·        Each component variant references exactly one Concept Group. 

·         In the different Concepts, you describe and process the essential basic data of a component variant, such as material data and documents.

To represent alternative decompositions of a product, you can also maintain different product structures for the different concepts. To ensure that the product structure maintained especially for a concept is exploded during testing, you enter information for the explosion in a Concept Access.

Integrating Concepts in Engineering Processes

You can link the requirements for a product to a possible solution (concept), by maintaining a relationship between the requirement structure and the concept. This gives you a quick overview of which possible solutions exist for a requirement.

Concepts have no operational function, and are ignored in materials planning, for example. If a concept becomes effective for operational purposes, you must copy the data of the concept to the component variant. This release step copies the data of the selected concept to the component variant. The data of the concept overwrites all of the data of the component variant, so we recommend that you simulate this change first.   

Restrictions

The following functions are not supported:

·        You cannot maintain object dependencies for concepts, and you cannot configure concepts.

·        A reference from one concept to more than one component variant is not possible.
You can re-use a concept by copying it.

·         There is no automatic calculation and no summarization of costs by controlling. Results of external calculations can be stored in a linked document.  Alternatively, you can store this data in customer-specific fields (customer include).

·         You cannot enter a reference to a concept group for color nodes.

·         Concepts are not distributed to other systems.

·         Concepts have no influence on a low-level code or recursion.

·         You cannot change concept groups and concepts with history.

·         You cannot process concepts on the Web user interface of the product designer.