The company I work for is in the infancy of revision control. We don't typically re-use parts (other than hardware) on each new assembly that goes into production but due to the nature of our business, design revisions are taking place up to the last minute. We need to be able to quickly communicate when a revision has occurred internally to several functional areas (i.e. Purchasing, Planning, Estimating).

We're looking at Workgroup PDM since all design starts in SolidWorks where part numbers are assigned and bills of materials created. Enterprise PDM seems to have a tool we're really after, the ability to notify via email all people working on a project that a part revision has occured. The pricetag of EPDM gave us sticker shock let alone what seems like one person's full-time effort to implement and manage. WPDM we hope can do the trick. I'm hoping I've just not yet been able to find the "communicate changes" function listed within WPDM and that it is there somewhere. Most of our costliest mistakes occur when Purchasing has not been informed that a part has changed from Rev A to B and the supplier needs to incorporate the change before shipping us finished parts. In this electronic age, I don't want to hand-walk every revision thru the system or be the writer of countless internal/expternal emails when my time is better spent designing and making the changes.

If you have any advice about WPDM's capabilities beyond just part and drawing rev control and into communication with team members, I'd sure appreciate it. In my perfect world, WPDM will forward a read-only copy of the revised part drawing (PDF) and bill of material out to team members when a change has been made. Thanks.