Hi guys,

here's a topic for discussion: How do you track the manufacturing of parts that are part of a larger SW project?

For example, you design machine ABC, which is a medium size SW assembly consisting of a few hundred parts, both manufactured and purchased.

For the parts to be manufactured, some need to be sent out for treatment, finishing (painting, anodizing, etc). Sheet metal parts are also sent out for laser cutting and bending.

When the design of the machine is complete, and all drawings are complete, you start placing orders for the parts that are sub contracting, and all in-house machining begins.

3 weeks later, how can you get a good visual status of the project?

Since some modifications are done to the machine even when the manufacturing has started, ideally there should be a system in place that always uses the latest BOM, and parts can be marked DONE when manufacturing is completed.

Right now, we use an excel BOM export from the top-most assembly drawing. This works ok, except that when BOM changes, the exproted excel BOM obviously does not auto update.

Also, there must be better ways of tracking manufacturing in this day and age other than handing over an excel file to production and telling them to checkmark parts when they are done.

Ideas?

Thanks.