Welcome to the Onshape forum! Ask questions and join in the discussions about everything Onshape.
First time visiting? Here are some places to start:- Looking for a certain topic? Check out the categories filter or use Search (upper right).
- Need support? Ask a question to our Community Support category.
- Please submit support tickets for bugs but you can request improvements in the Product Feedback category.
- Be respectful, on topic and if you see a problem, Flag it.
If you would like to contact our Community Manager personally, feel free to send a private message or an email.
Part Releases, Revision Management, and Release Cascade up the Product Structure
aeromorrison
Member Posts: 23 PRO
My team has been using Onshape now for about 18 months and it has resulted in much more agile and rapid development on the whole. We build regulated products in the aviation/aerospace market and precise configuration management is very important to our business.
Our company's biggest challenge with Onshape currently is revision management and the apparent necessity to cascade every released revision up through the entire product structure to maintain a pristine released product structure. The large majority of changes cascading up the tree are unnecessary and create many,
many 'no value' revisions to assemblies just to keep Onshape aligned on the released product configuration. These cascading revisions then have to be cascaded further to
downstream systems such as MRP/ERP. This creates a lot of needless
churn. In addition, in our regulated industry we normally have to engage the regulators on any product change and also gain their approval on changes. This is a long process that can take weeks or months, so we cannot afford to have phantom changes propagating up through the product structure that the regulator does not understand since there is no 'real' change.
Best practice in product configuration management say that
"parts do not have revisions" from the standpoint that revisions to P/Ns cannot
impact form/fit/function or interchangeability. A revision to a part
should not impact any assembly where it is used and part numbers of any revision status should be stored in inventory in the
same bin. If a change will impact a higher level assembly then
it should be assigned a new part number. A part number change then only
cascades as many levels up the assembly tree as required before no
longer affecting form/fit/function or interchangeability. In many cases this is only one level. Part revisions should never have a need to cascade up the chain as those revisions should not impact form/fit/function/interchangeability.
We've been heavy users of Onshape for the last 18 months, but I could certainly be missing something here--I hope so!! Has anyone managed to tackle this problem in Onshape in an elegant manner that avoids non-value-added revision cascades? Overall we're loving Onshape and have found it to be a "breath of fresh air" from a development standpoint. The ongoing configuration control and change management after the development process is where we're struggling.
I'd love to see a new Company setting that allows for uniqueness in parts to be determined by P/N and not
revision. In other words, the Product Structure (or BOM) should only need to include the
P/N of item and should not need to include the revision level. Part revisions should be automatically absorbed by the higher level assembly. This change would solve my company's
biggest challenge with Onshape and make both engineering and production
personnel very happy. It would probably save our relatively small team 20-25 hours of labor per month that could be applied to product development efforts.
Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Tagged:
3
Comments
Other places I've worked and various configuration/change management books etc that I've read would agree with your best practices. I'm trying to drive things that way at my current company. One caveat is that I like to pull P/N as early as possible in development so that prototypes are made from things with P/Ns. I'm ok with violating the form/fit/function rule during development, and keeping the same part number even with some major revisions. As soon as we get to EVT/DVT/PVT, then a form/fit/function change should drive a new P/N.
Can you be a little more explicit about your document structures?
- Does your company use a document per part, or document per assembly or document per project?
- When you do releases, how many parts and drawings are rev'd at the same time?
- When do you create versions of assemblies vs revisions?
- How are you integrating Onshape with your MRP/ERP system(s)? (and what one(s) are you using?)
- If there is an update mark in an assembly, when do you chose to update the part(s)?
- What sort of history do you need to retrieve when it comes to BOMs? Do you need to be able to pull up all the correct revisions of parts at a particular snapshot in time, or are you just looking for the assembly to show the latest part revisions all the time.
One way to keep the documentation easier that I've seen is that the assembly drawings have exploded views and a BOM table with item numbers, but no part numbers. Manufacturing SOPs also refer to item numbers. Typically the assembly drawings and SOPs only get updated if there are part quantity changes, or part revisions are so different, or the assembly process is so different that it no longer makes sense. If the draft on a part changes, you don't rev the assembly drawing. Then there is a separate BOM document with item numbers and part numbers which does get revised to track the revisions of the parts.Would that process work for you?
I'm actually really curious about this issue, as I have dealt with the same thing with medical devices. In our system, the process was to always roll the changes all the way up to make sure even the smallest change at the bottom could be seen by looking at the top-level changes at the top. It was not an efficient process.
I've been wondering if use of major and minor revision numbers for assemblies could help e.g. 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, A.1, etc.
It would not address the fundamental issue of having to cascade every released revision to the top but might help distinguish what is a minor change (form/fit/function the same) to a major change (form/fit/function different).
In change management there's the concept of Material Disposition, which indicates how the new and old revision are to be handled, in WIP and in inventory.
In the Medical Device regulated industry we definitely need for Parts to have Revisions, since introducing new Part Numbers to a BOM that is in a Commercial state will require extensive testing, trials, validation and documentation, where as a revision inherits a lot of the data in those stages.
My recommendation would be to look at Arena, and see what solution they offer for Lifecycle and Change Management
CAD Engineering Manager
As you describe, my models will have a new version every time a change is made. This change would update a drawing, but if the drawing does not "technically" change, the drawing will not change revision (via the revision table). My MRP system is what is managing the revisions, not Onshape.
If I make a change, that means the drawing needs to be updated; I will update my drawing and the revision table. This, in turn, will be saved on the next release. I name that release either the new drawing revision or the ECO.
I may work on version V1234 of the model, but my drawing may only be revision C. This way, when I get the message that other parts need updating, I can update them without any issues. Development work would also be branched off and combined if It was found to be helpful following an ECO.
In the short term, I don't use the model versions to determine my part's revision.
I don't work in the aerospace industry, and my workflow is rather primitive for my small assemblies, but I can understand your issues with the lack of flexibility.
A simple "Minor Change" function with full audit trail in the Versions and History would be all we need.