Introduction

One of the primary reasons that businesses adopt the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is the ability it offers to formally manage the design release and revise processes. Having formal processes in place helps all stakeholders keep track of change at all times, and in many industries is a legal requirement. Without having a controlled process in place for releasing and revising designs, businesses can run the risk of releasing an out-of-date design to market or failing regulatory compliance.

The extended capabilities of the SOLIDWORKS Design Standard, Professional, and Premium roles enable companies to formally document the authorization and release of a design using a Change Action item. Change Actions associated with each SOLIDWORKS Design are created and managed using the 3DEXPERIENCE Change Action app.

A Change Action item can also be used to capture all of the information related to a formal design change, for example, the people tasked with carrying out the change in SOLIDWORKS Design, the individual approvers of the change, and all the SOLIDWORKS items related to the change. Change Actions have their own pre-configured lifecycle consisting of five maturity states.

For customers working in heavily regulated industries where a high degree of traceability is required, the SOLIDWORKS PLM Professional (and Change Manager, CHG) role extends the capabilities of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform further. The Change governance capabilities provided by this role are intended to be used by companies with a specific team of people in place whose job will be to carry out a full assessment and feasibility study of any proposed changes to a design. The team will then plan, assign, and monitor the progress of multiple change actions related to their respective change orders and change requests. This team is often referred to in a company as a change board. To learn more about change governance, please refer to the Implementing a Formal Change Process section of this adoption guide.

Why Use Change Actions?

Change Actions can involve many different processes to complete. The process to complete a change action outside of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is manual. This is true whether you do it through email, network folders, phone calls, multiple systems, or a combination of those methods. There is room for error and little visibility to those involved or affected, making it a very cumbersome and unreliable process in most environments. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows for all facets of the change action to take place in one single platform with ultimate visibility and flexibility. Using change actions within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows all members of the change action to:

• Collaborate
• Make changes in a single environment
• Store data in a single environment.
• Use an automated process with approvals to complete the lifecycle of a change action to an object

Using change actions in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform ensures traceability. A change action item maintains all signatures, documents, and metadata related to the documents surrounding the change, and is the authority to release the content.

Use Case - Formal Design Release and Revise using Change Actions.

For engineering teams that require a formal design release and revise process, change actions are used to automate the promotion of physical products and drawings to the Released maturity state, and to automate the creation of new revisions.  Change Actions can govern access rights and control the lifecycle of the process at all times.

The image below shows an example of a basic change action workflow using the pre-configured “out of the box” behaviour. This represents the recommended use case for SOLIDWORKS Design users.

1. A manager creates the change action item and assigns the members and defines their roles, and then adds the Physical Products required for the change, plus any other supporting documents
2. The change action is promoted by the manager from Draft to the In Work maturity state, and new revisions of the attached Physical Products are created
3. The designer works on the new revisions of the Physical Products in SOLIDWORKS Design that were created by the change action
4. Once the necessary changes to the design have been made using SOLIDWORKS Design, the designer promotes the components to the Frozen maturity state.
5. The change action is promoted to the In Approval maturity state by the designer
6. The manager receives a notification that the change action is awaiting approval. The changes are reviewed and accepted by the manager. The change action is promoted to the Approved maturity state (alternatively, the changes could be rejected and the maturity demoted to In Work).
7. The change action is now complete
8. When the change action is approved, the physical products and drawings related to the change action are automatically promoted to the Released maturity state

For an in-depth explanation of this use case, please refer to the post titled The Basics of Release and Change in the WORKS | Onboarding and Adoption community.

Defining a Bespoke Approval Process

In a situation where reviewing and approving a change will involve multiple people, a route approval process can be defined. Routes in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform are used to automatically generate tasks that are then automatically assigned to people to action. Any stage of a route can include one or more people, and can be configured so that either all or just one of the people is required to approve before the route moves to the next task.

When creating a change action, a route can be selected as the approver instead of an individual person. For more information explaining how to use Routes in combination with change actions, please refer to the SolidPractices guide titled Route Management.

The change action workflow and behaviour as described in the use case above is pre-configured for each Tenant (except for bespoke approval routes). Therefore, the implementation of this simple revision management process requires minimal configuration. Dedicated time, however, must be spent on training users to ensure that they fully understand the workings of the change action app, the change action lifecycle, and the process of working under a change action in SOLIDWORKS Design.

Managing Design Change with Issues Capture

As previously discussed, change actions are the core item used to manage change in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The previous use case explained how change actions can be assigned to a person or team nominated to execute the change, how the necessary revisions are created automatically, and how the lifecycle of the associated SOLIDWORKS files is transitioned when complete. This is the recommended starting point for SOLIDWORKS Design users adopting the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Once users are comfortable and familiar with using Change Actions, if required, the change process can be expanded further so that anyone within a company can initiate an issue related to a SOLIDWORKS design, and that issue can then be used to drive a change action. Issues are captured and managed using the Issues Management app available in the SOLIDWORKS Design roles. Issues are a great way for anyone in a company to capture and document an issue related to a design, and then share that information directly with the relevant person or department in their organization.

Expanding the Solution Beyond Change Actions

For companies operating in regulated industries that need to formally manage a high degree of change to complex products, the SOLIDWORKS PLM Professional role offers a scalable solution that expands on the capabilities of Change Actions.

Using issues in combination with SOLIDWORKS PLM Professional, issues can drive change orders, and a change order can drive multiple change actions. Issues can also govern a change request that in turn governs a series of change orders, and those change orders can drive multiple change actions.

For specific guidance related to implementing change governance, please refer to the Implementing a Formal Change Process section of this adoption guide.

For online learning content, please refer to the following courses available in the 3DEXPERIENCE Works Training library.

• Explore the Change Manager Role
• Perform as a Change Manager

Summary

Using SOLIDWORKS Design in combination with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides companies with a pre-configured solution for formal release and revision management using change actions. The use cases referenced in this section of the adoption guide are the recommended starting point for design teams that require formal governance. Although the implementation of this simple revision management process requires minimal configuration of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Dedicated time must be spent training users to ensure that they fully understand the workings of the change action app, the change action lifecycle, and the process of working under a change action in SOLIDWORKS Design.

Once users are comfortable working with Change Actions and Routes, their workflows can be expanded to include other capabilities, for example, Issues Management and 3D Markup.

Feedback

Was this page useful?

Hit the Like Button or let us know what we can improve in the comments section below.