Hello,

I have a question regarding a scenario faced by the customer while using the Manufacturing environment with PPL (Manufacturing Item Definition).

In the customer’s current scenario, there are two distinct engineering departments:

• Product Engineering, responsible for product development through SOLIDWORKS and the XEN (Engineering Release) process;
• Manufacturing Engineering, responsible for defining and applying the manufacturing process to the projects.

Most of the customer’s projects are very similar to each other, typically containing approximately 90% of the structure reused from the primary project, with only small modifications such as additional accessories or fitting changes.

Example:

Assembly A Structure

• Part A
• Part B

Assembly B Structure

• Part A (reused from Assembly A)
• Part B (reused from Assembly A)
• Part C (new item)

Question 1

Considering the scenario above, I would like to confirm whether the most appropriate feature for manufacturing structure reuse would be “Create/Update Item Structure”, since this process allows the reuse of existing MBOM components in the new assembly while mirroring the EBOM structure.

However, there is another scenario observed in the customer environment.

In some cases, the Manufacturing Engineering team creates the MBOM structure independently from the EBOM structure, considering specific manufacturing process requirements.

Example:

EBOM Structure developed by Product Engineering

• Assembly A
  • Part A
  • Part B
  • Part C

MBOM Structure developed by Manufacturing Engineering

• Assembly A
  • Part A
  • Sub_Assembly A
    • Part B
    • Part C

In this case, the “Sub_Assembly A” is created only in the manufacturing context using “Manufacturing Assembly”, and it does not exist in the EBOM structure. Consequently, it does not have an associated Physical Product.

Question 2

(I recorded a video to better detail this scenario.)

Considering that the EBOM and MBOM structures contain different levels, we observed that when reusing the manufacturing structure for new assemblies, the additional levels created exclusively in the MBOM — such as “Sub_Assembly A” — are not reused during the process.

I would like to confirm whether there is any recommended feature or approach to ensure the complete reuse of the MBOM structure, including levels created exclusively in the manufacturing context.

Thank you.