Product model components
Components
A product configuration model consists of one or more components that are tied together through subcomponent relationships. You would define components only once, and then you can use them many times in one or more product configuration models. The components are the main building blocks of a product configuration model, and nearly all information about the model is related to them.
Attributes
Each component has one or more attributes that identify its properties. The attributes are what users choose during the configuration process. Attributes control inter-component and intra-component relationships through inclusion in constraints or calculations. Through conditions that you apply to BOM lines, the system can use the attributes to determine which physical parts that the configured product should consist of. Additionally, an attribute can control the property of a BOM line through a mapping mechanism. Similar functionality exists for route operations regarding inclusion and property settings.
Expression constraints and table constraints
Constraints control the attribute values that you can select when you configure products for a sales order, sales quotation, purchase order, or production order. You can use expression constraints or table constraints, depending on how you prefer to build the constraints. The next unit provides more information.
Calculations
Calculations serve as a tool within a configuration model for conducting arithmetic operations. They are essential for tasks such as determining the length of raw materials or calculating the processing time that's needed for operations, such as polishing. Calculations become crucial because they assign values to target attributes after all necessary, included attribute values in the calculation expression are available. This approach ensures that the configuration accurately reflects the computed results that you need for various aspects of the model.
Subcomponents
Subcomponents are nodes within the structure of a product configuration model. Each subcomponent relationship requires a reference to a product master that's configured with constraint-based configuration technology. This approach ensures that the product configuration accurately reflects the defined relationships and constraints in the model.
User requirements
A user requirement has all the constituents of a subcomponent. The only difference is that a user requirement isn't bound to a product master. The practical effect of this difference is that the system collapses any BOM lines or route operation that you define in the context of a user requirement into the parent component BOM structure or route. This behavior resembles the behavior of a phantom BOM.
User requirements can also include soft requirements for a product, especially where you're more familiar with the product than the customer. When you add a user requirement to a product configuration model, you need to add attributes and BOM lines to the corresponding component to represent the user requirement.
You might have constraints that you want to use in multiple configuration models or have BOMs or operations that you want to use across several models. The system pulls BOM and route operations of user requirements into the parent item in a phantom BOM way. A phantom BOM is a BOM structure that isn't an item. It represents the recipe of something that you don't intend to store as a unit.
BOM lines
The product configuration model includes BOM lines to identify the manufacturing BOM for each component. A BOM line can reference an item or a service, and you can set all item properties to a fixed value, or you can map them to an attribute.
BOM lines are held together in a BOM structure that you create for the subcomponent and the item that's represented.
You can use conditions for BOM lines in a product configuration model to include or exclude a specific BOM line when you configure a product. When the condition is true, the system includes the designated BOM line and corresponding item number in the configured product.
Route operations
Product configuration models include route operations to identify the manufacturing routes for the subcomponents. A production route in Supply Chain Management is composed of a sequence of steps or operations that define a manufacturing process. Similar to a production BOM, you need to have a route approved before you can use it, and you must also select it as active. The system completes the approval and activation so that the user doesn't need to perform these manual steps.
The system attaches an operation in a route to a specific resource or to the capabilities that the resource must own. This approach defines a person, machine, tool, or vendor who performs the work.
You can define a route and attach it to more than one item, similar to how you can define and attach an operation to more than one route. A company can build up a library of operations that they can reuse on many routes.
A route only contains operations and doesn't depend on BOM components.