Kick-Start Your Upchain Experience

TOMISLAV HORVAT: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Kick Start Your Upchain Experience session. I'm Tomislav Horvat and I will be speaker for this session. So let's get started. Before going deeper, I need to note safe harbor statement. Please note that all AU content is proprietary. Do not copy, post, or distribute without expressed permission. And with it, let's dig in.

So about me. I'm a product manager for Upchain. I'm a mechanical engineer in the background. I'm specialized in mechatronics and robotics. I did numerous projects in different industries like food industry, tobacco industry, pharmaceutical industry, automotive industry, and I'm always trying to look at the user's point of view. If I was the user, how would I use the system? How can I improve the system?

And that's what's guiding me in reviewing and also enhancing Upchain application. And with that, let's get started. So about the session. There are three things that you will be getting out of this session. So first of all, I will show you the overview of the whole application, the critical parts of the application, where you will see what features that Upchain has.

Second, I will note for each area which users can benefit from those areas. So some of the roles which I might mention, like project manager or mechanical engineer or maybe a shop floor worker does not correlate 1 to 1 to your business, but that doesn't mean that a combined role or other roles that you have in your business cannot use these features and functionalities.

Third which you will be getting out is the whole flow from getting the data from the Inventor up to the cloud using Upchain cloud solution-- using Upchain addin to go into the cloud solution. There, we will review the data sets, we will approve the data sets, and we will order those data sets. At the end of that, we will ask the engineers to perform additional change on the model.

That means that we will ask him to go back to the system, back to the local CAD system, to download the new version, perform the modification, and do the release process again. One thing to note. We will be viewing out of the box functionalities today. So this is vanilla chain. No modifications were done from my site. This is the tenant as you would be getting when it is created anew.

And with that, let's start. So what can go wrong? So everything can go wrong, especially if you're on the tight deadline something will go wrong. Something will be missed. Something will break. Numerous things can go wrong. Let me give you my three examples, which happened to me what did go wrong.

So one time we were asked to produce spare parts, which is nothing unusual. Machine parts were out, and we always give spare parts to our customers. Well, the problem was that I was working on that project in a new exact location in our file system where those files and drawings should have been.

But when I go getting to that location, they were not there. So a colleague of mine tried to do the optimization of our file system so we can be more efficient, and by doing that, he broke every assembly link that we have. It took us weeks to fix all the broken links that he has produced.

Second example which I can give which happened to me is that we are mechanical engineers, so we produce parts. We are solving, let's say, problems that people have in the world, but we are not IT security experts. It happened that a colleague of mine got attacked by a ransomware, and half of our data sets were crypto encrypted.

We were not able to open them. If you were to open them, you will get a message, please give us 0.02 bitcoins. And a great deal of data sets were lost because of that attack. Third example, which I can give you, which is probably the biggest one, is about the line where we were using, at that time, biggest standard robot.

So we needed it to complete some complicated manual operations and we ordered it. It had a long lead time a few months, and after the truck came to our facility, we started to unload that robot. And that's where the problem struck because we got one big box which is the robot, we got one smaller box which is the controller, and then we got another big and small box. What happened is that the procurement guy took the wrong BOM with wrong quantities and ordered two robots, and also the finance department paid for two robots so the budget was completely blown.

Now, stick with me through this session and in the end you will understand how some of these situations could not happen in Upchain. For example, from security point, Upchain has a dedicated department of security engineers who are reviewing constantly applications, and we have so many mechanisms in the background so we cannot get impacted by a ransomware attack like we did on the local file system.

OK. And with that, let's go to the demo. First, I will show you the overview of the application before diving into the user demo. So this is the landing page, the project landing page which you will see once you log in to the Upchain. At the top of the header you will see Projects, which is the list of all the projects in the tenant.

If you are a project manager, this would be an important function for you where you would create new projects. So those are the new workspaces where your engineer departments will work, contribute to. This is also the place where you would add your documentation sheets to it so they know what they need to produce and what they need to follow. You also can view any of the previous versions which you have seen.

You can use the quick search, advanced search functionalities, and there is a right section here where you can download the latest CAD plugins which you need to use if you want to get all the benefits in your system. On the bottom left corner, you will see activity stream where it is noted everything that users are doing in the system.

On the middle side, you will see the parts which you have favoritized, so those are the items where you are working actively on or you're reviewing actively and you want to have quick access to them without remembering item name or item numbers. On the right side are the assignments which are assigned to you. And if anything is out of date, you will probably see a red flag saying that you are late for something. Middle part is for the projects, so here you will see all the projects which are favoritized by you.

If you click on any of those projects, you will see the project details, like how many persons are working on, how much documentations they have, how much items. You can also see how much-- right of the glass-- how much documentation is published. For example, in your business process you might say that you want all of the documents to be published at all times. If something is not published for a project manager, that's a signal right off that something is not completed.

Before going deeper into projects, let's quickly go to demonstration section. This is the section where only tenant administrators have access to. So like I said, we are using out of the box vanilla settings. I have not changed anything inside. We'll use standard workflows. But to better fit your business needs, Upchain can be tweaked to follow your business processes.

So you might be using different item numbering rules or document numbering rules. You want to activate or deactivate certain tenant properties because your business needs them. You want to create different workflows so the approvals are happening at different stage by different persons. Project managers may be mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, procurement guys, suppliers, et cetera.

Also, you are able to invite new users in your tenant or to deactivate certain users which left your company. You are also able to reassign tasks. For example, somebody is on vacation, somebody is sick, but there is a process where he needs to review something. So tenant administrator is able to unblock your process by assigning the task to somebody else because we cannot wait for him to return.

That's in short for the administration section. If we return to the main application and go into a project, we will see the project dashboard. Here, again, we have matrices which are followed for each and specific projects, how much of the items are released, how much of tasks are completed. Also, there is an interesting design section which you can see what objects you recently created. Also your assignments, again, and if any items are logged by you.

So Upchain is really taking care of that no two guys can work at the same item at the same time. That means that if I'm working on a certain model, you cannot overwrite my changes. And by the way, you will get a clear indication that I'm working on it. So if it's something critical that you want to implement you can say to me, OK, can you please release the item so I can implement my changes?

Item dashboards can be the default dashboard that's usually used by the project manager, while the design can be used by anybody in the project who might have edited those files to have an audit trail of what you have changed and if something needs to be released. You're able to even use the Clear All option, which really releases it very simple and fast.

Now we're moving to BOM. BOM is the bill of materials. That is what you need to produce this project. At this moment I have two end items, which is the concept design and the real machine. In this case, our machine is the suspension system. And if we look at it, here are all the items which we need to produce the suspension system. We can see there are quantities. For example, nobody can order two suspension systems because they can see that quantity is one for this project.

We can see all the attributes for each of those items, which states, do they have CAD models, what are their item numbers, do they have the drawings attached? Everything is available for the project managers, for the reviewers, for engineers to see. Now, if you go to the right pane, we will see that all of everything which is displayed in this matrix and can be changeable in this matrix can also be changed from the right pane for these items.

We can also see the business process where this was involved. So in this CR, the suspension system was released. That means that it was approved to be consumed. We can also see multiple investigation requests which were erased for this one. So somebody said that they need extra dimensions or they need to correct the model because it's incorrect, and it's possible to raise that kind of a request for these models.

Now, that's not all that can be viewed from BOM. You can go even deeper and you can view without having any CAD software 3D representation. And if it's needed for you, so even 2D representation. cBOM is what's needed to open it in CAD software, but from web we don't really benefit from it. We don't have inventory in web. Same is for drawings. We know what's attached there, but we cannot use it.

What we can use is the 3D viewer, which I opened in the background, and we can use the 2D viewer to view the drawing. In this case, this would be used by reviewers of your change request and also by your shop floor users and assembly guys. So if somebody was assembling this suspension system and they want to see how does it all fit together, they can use 2D viewer capabilities like hiding certain parts to get more information out of it, or they might want to see how does it all go together.

So they are able to use exploding options to see how does all those parts fit together. And this is all in the web, accessible to anybody who has access to this project, to this item. No extra software is needed. Same goes for the drawing. So no extra software is needed to open this drawing representation, and it's always up to date. This model and this drawing are direct link to the item. Whatever changes were done on the CAD site, they are seeable here right away.

So you are no longer looking at print or drawing and wondering, is that outdated? Am I having the latest version? This is the latest version. There are certain capabilities which you can use in 2D and 3D viewer. For example, you can use annotations, so you can ask for a certain clarification. I need additional details about what bearing is used here. Or you can take measurements.

You can say, OK, how big is this hole? Or you could ask engineers to go inside of the CAD software and maybe to measure that and edit the drawing. Same capabilities are available in 3D. So you are able to take measurement distances right off the model. So you might just want to check something.

You don't need that dimension on the drawing, but you want to see if something has been correctly assembled. It's available right here. That's shortly about 2D and 3D viewer. Business processes we will cover in the demo. Let's go to the documentation side. So there are two types of documents which I should mention.

One are the item documents. Those are strictly linked to this item. It can be, let's say, tolerance analysis for this item. It can be maybe material data sheets for this specific item, while the documents which are attached to the project, those have a relationship to the project. For example, it could be the customer requests.

Maybe it's a concept that you presented to customer and it was accepted from their side. So this is the project manager repository where they are putting all the information they got, maybe from emails, all the nodes that they have, and they're putting it in one single place which is accessible to anybody who needs to see it. When the engineer is starting a project, he should review what documentation is available for that and what guidelines he should follow.

So at the moment, we have only general category and linked documents. Those are the two available categories out of the box, but you're able to create multiple categories. So you can have mechanical documents. You can have electrical documents, safety documents, input documents.

Each one of those documents can be checked out, checked in. That means that you can do multiple changes on it. You can also publish it. If something was confirmed by the customer, accepted by him, we should not change that. So we can publish that in the system and whoever is working will need to follow these regulations. Again, all of these documentations can be viewed in the 2D viewer.

Last section is the project settings. So this is the project manager space where he is activating the privacy settings. Is this a public project? Is it a private project? Should everybody has access to this or it's maybe internal knowledge or is it sensitive matter that should not be exposed to everybody? It's possible to add different members to with different roles to this project. It's also possible to activate, close, or archive the project.

And we did that. We are concluding this part. There is one additional thing which I will show which kind of relates to the demo that I will be playing now. So if we go to this machine, we will see that we have concept design with two versions. We have main assembly and we have version two. We will take this main assembly and we will now open it in Inventor.

Now let's start the demo. The engineering members are usually working in the CAD software. Once you download and install a Upchain plugin, you will get addin right away inside of it. We have support for multiple different versions of Inventor, of CATIA, SolidWorks, Creo.

So the look and feel of all the headings is the same. What you will be seeing today in Inventor can be replicated in any of the other CAD software so the mechanical engineer will have the same experience. We will go to the machine 101 and we will go to the project BOM. Project BOM is what you can see on the web. We will take our concept design from version one and we will open it.

Now the system is asking us which version we want to download. We want to download the latest version that we are working on. And also from the flag, the engineer right away can see that this one is released. Also, when we are opening this design and refreshing our cBOM, we'll see that it's released right away. Now, the note from the project manager or from the senior member was to re-use this in a new project for a new version, actually.

So let's copy this design and use the clone functionality. Only thing that we will not use are the nuts. They will stay the same. Let us use the clone functionality to create new versions. And right away we can see that we have lost all the item numbers relationship and it says not registered. That means that we need to push it into the system again, which we will do it by the checking command. We will choose our version two and push the data to the cloud.

OK. Now we are getting to the BOM section. BOM Wizard is a tool which is showing you what changes you are doing. So it says to us, from these files, you are cloning those files. And it's also giving you ability to include something or not include it in your eBOM. For this case, we will not include old files. We will just take new files and we will create new items for it. We will click OK.

And with that option, we have got new items for which we can work on. The uploading is going from the CAD to the cloud and the items are available. So we can see they're in development state. Those are the new item numbers, not related to the old ones.

Let's say from the engineering point of view, for this simple design this is done. What we can do is send it for a change request, which will approve this. So let's add it to the cart. Let's go to our cart and let's send it to the standard out of the box easier workflow. This is all what engineer can do from his CAD system. Now we are going to the web for a reviewing part.

So first thing which we should say that this is the initial release for our new version. So we are putting a note inside so everybody can see what this release was about. We also will attach documentation which we have produced with which we are saying that this is ready to be, indeed, released. So we are adding the different analysis and the tolerance analysis for these parts.

By that, we have completed everything we need. We have here also we can change release type and revision note for those parts. We can leave it like this, but just to note, out of the box workflows are always incrementing major releases as AA, AB, AC, so on, and the minor releases as 00, 01, 02, so on. By starting the workflow, we are saying our work as an engineer is done. Now you can have multiple persons, depending on your workflow, reviewing this. It can be lead mechanical engineers, maybe electrical engineers, project managers.

Maybe the cost of the project is so big that you need additional approvers inside. Maybe you need to review suppliers, so on. By releasing the items, we are moving it from development to the pending state and from pending state to the end state, which will be the release state. You can also see the workflow actions who did what, so it's the audit trail-- which actions hit it and at which time. Documents can also be revised, reviewed, and released.

For this process we did not release them. OK. By that, we have completed the first part. And if we go to our bill of materials, we will see that in version two now we have a released assembly, which is what we wanted. We have used the version one. We have cloned it. It's no longer 307 item number, it's a new item number for a new version, 312. Now what we want?

We want to requisition it. We'll send it a change notice. Change notice we are using requisition workflow, again, out of the box. We are saying that we are ordering parts for version two. OK. We are saving it. And now we could tweak the quantities if we wanted to, but for our example we will not. We will just start the workflow, we won't change the requisition date.

We could also say that we don't want it by that date, we want it sooner, or we need it later. We are saying that that's what we need. And from engineering point of view, project manager point of view, leading personnel point of view, everything which was needed to create this version two has been ordered, approved, and that's it. Now, how does this save you from maybe double ordering?

So for example, if somebody goes into the system and wants to double again. Now you can see that he's not able to order those quantities again. If you see, none of the numbers are here so I'm not able to requisition any of the quantities because I have already ordered everything I need. So in the case of my robot, I would not be able to requisition additional one.

And we will discard this one because we can't use it. If we go back to the system to the bill of materials, let's say that we have built a version two and we have seen some problems. The easiest problem that we can see is that we have wrong nut. So this nut should not be here, it should be moved to this one. And we are asking to do this in BOM, to do this change.

What we can do is to raise an investigation request. So we can say, move nut, and we can say, please move nut on stud A to stud B. We can assign it to me because I'm the only one on the project. And I will, again, use issue workflow out of the box. You can see that my markup, which I did on the 3D model, is automatically attached. That means, in this case, I will get an investigation request which will ask me to do these changes.

Now, investigation requests are part of the business processes. If we go to the investigation request, we will see that the new one was created and we can see right away what I need to do. I will not mark it yet as a complete. I will go back to the Inventor. I will go back to my BOM and I will refresh. Why I will do that? Because once we have released those items, they are not longer development. They have moved from development state to the release state. There we go. Whole data set is released. Now, to do the changes I need to check it out.

So I need to say I'm raising logs to do certain actions here and I'm checking all the impacted assemblies. I'm checking out. I'm saying, please raise log and block anybody else from doing any changes. What will I do now? I will take the top nut, I will copy it, I will paste it into the model, I will move it under this model, so under the left-- the right stud.

Yep. And I will remove top nut from here. OK. Let's go inside here. I will-- OK, I need to make it not grounded, and I can move it approximately here. OK. And we did-- I did the changes which I needed. I removed-- I did not remove. I removed the top nut from the left stud and I have added the nut to the right stud.

OK. What I need to do? I need to push those changes into the system. Now the system is asking, where do you want to push those changes? I want to push them to same version two because we will do the rework on those version, let's say, in our house shop floor. Now, what is the system saying to me? This is a good example. It says to me, you're trying to push the changes which you have not saved locally. Are you sure you want to do that? Yes, I am sure I want to do that.

OK. I'm again pushing it to version two and saying, yes, I want to coincide with those changes. Now, again, I'm getting notifications from engineering point of view, useful information where it says, look, you have moved this part to this one. Are you OK with this structure?

Yes, I am. Please proceed. System is now taking again my files from my system and pushing them to the cloud, and it's done. We can see that the logs are gone. No longer does it have any logs or any messages. I'm, again, going to add it to cart and I'm going to repeat the process of sending it to ECR workflow. Now once it goes to the Upchain app, I will edit the description and I will say that this is version two, revision two.

Let's say change nut from stud A to stud B so everybody who views my design will know. You can see that the revision note is in red. I will purposely not populate it. And to start the workflow you will see that it says to me right away, well, you have not populated. What are the changes? This is not the initial push of data into the system. What have you changed? And let's say that I will say moved nut for this change. And to save my time, I will use bulk note to populate all the revision notes.

OK. Now when I click Save and I start the workflow, again, I can attach documentation if I have in workflow different users. They, again, come inside, do the cross-functional review, again, to see that all the changes are OK and, in the end, releasing the design and approving the change. That's OK. And we can see also here from the picture that this is the change design. No longer the nuts are in the same stud.

And with this one, we have post new data set, we have changed our BOM for version two from having one stud to two studs. So if you remember version one, two nuts on the same side. Version two has one nut on the right side. OK. Also useful information is that you can see here, visualization is still in progress. That means that we will not be able to run the 3D view over yet. Sometimes for some models it takes some time to create those visualizations.

And with that, I'm concluding my demo. Thank you for your time. Oh, one last thing that we should definitely do is to approve the changes that we did. So we'll mark and our investigation is complete. With this, I'm concluding my demo. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to send them my way and I will always try to answer them. Thank you very much.