Streamline Your Development Workflows with Vault and Fusion Lifecycle

PETER VAN AVONDT: OK, good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Hey.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Hey, good afternoon. I know I'm standing between you and a party now. So everybody awake?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah, yeah? Still full of energy? Yeah, you're keeping it for after this class, I guess. Good.

Welcome to this class about streamlining your workflows, your design and development workflows, with actually a PDM and a PLM solution. So what I'm going to do and teach you is about combining Autodesk Vault with Fusion Lifecycle and how that works.

So this is the agenda. I'm going to do a short introduction about myself but also about the class itself, and then talk about actually the role of PDM and PLM within the development process. We will talk about the touchpoints of both solutions, how a PDM system actually fits within a PLM workflow, and then look at how we can actually combine these both solutions together.

The blue boxes, these are two demo slots that I've put in. I'm going to try to do this live. So I will need some bandwidth for that. So maybe during the demos, you can switch off your phones or put it on flight modes. I don't know. No, I'm wired, so that's OK.

And at the end, I have some time to do some Q&A, a summary about what you saw, and maybe some discussion about it, OK? Good, let's get started.

This is my digital twin. I'm Peter Van Avondt. I'm a technical specialist based out of Belgium. That's somewhere in Europe for those who don't know Europe that well.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm serving actually in Northern Europe. I'm a technical specialist specialized in the data management and process management portfolio of Autodesk, meaning Autodesk Vault, Fusion Lifecycle, Fusion Teams-- so the collaboration bit of things. I've been working for Autodesk for four years right now, but I'm in what I call the Autodesk ecosystem for about 16 years. So I've been working-- before I joined Autodesk with an Autodesk distributor within Benelux-- as an AE-- application engineer-- implementing solutions, the solutions that you're using today.

So I've got a good background in all engineering processes. I'm actually also a master in engineering. I've got a master in engineering, electromechanical engineering. So I've been working both worlds and know how to combine both worlds there.

And if you want to reach out to me, tomorrow, I will be at the Answer Bar at noon during lunch. But after this class, you can always drop me an email, or try to find me on LinkedIn and just ask questions over there. Good.

Last year, I was also teaching a class here, and it was a class about PDF creation within Autodesk Vault. And I showed this picture on one of the slides. It's my two-year-old son who loves chocolate. And I was talking about my son and about the fact that he adores chocolate. And yeah, you can see he really adores chocolate.

But the fact was, at the end of the presentation, some people came to me, and they were really disappointed. You can imagine maybe why they were disappointed, because I didn't bring any chocolate with me from Belgium. So I had to deal with them. So I said, OK, if you vote me in for next year, I will bring some Belgian chocolate. So actually, I brought some Belgian chocolates.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Perfect.

PETER VAN AVONDT: So I will have a deal with you guys. So if you have a good question, I will award you with a Belgian chocolate, OK? Good?

Now I want to tell another story today about myself, what I do in my spare time when I'm not traveling around. And what I really love to do is actually doing some construction works at home. We had this plan a few years ago to do an extension to our house. And actually, we started seven months ago, and the extension is almost finished.

But what I love to do is get my hands dirty there, especially doing the plumbing, the heating, the electricity, this kind of stuff. This is really the things-- I'm an electromechanical engineer. So as an engineer, you want to get your hands dirty.

But what's important, actually, what I've learned over time is that if you want to succeed in doing something in construction, you need to have the right tools for the job. You can try to hammer that screw into the wall, but you will end up with a hole like this and the screw won't fix. Same thing with the wrench-- if you try to hammer the nail into the wood with the wrench, you will be screwed.

[LAUGHTER]

So yeah, actually, what was the analogy with your day-to-day work? If you don't have the right tools, the right tools to do your job, you'll also be screwed, maybe. But no, you won't be efficient in actually doing what you need to do. You will lose a lot of time on what we call non-value-added activities.

And the presentation's all about that, having the right tools in place. And what I want to do as a first step is looking actually at two of these tools that you can use in your day-to-day work, and that's PDM and PLM, and painting actually the playing field where they play along.

Before I start this, I just want to have a bit of a show of hands. Who is using today a PDM solution? Wow, most of you. So of the PDM solution, who of you is using Autodesk Vault? Yeah. Any other solutions? No. Well, that's good. That's good. Vault Basic? Vault Workgroup? A few. Basic? Vault Professional? Whoa, we've got a great audience here. I think most of you are using Vault Professional. That's good. That's good.

And then maybe on the other side, on the flip side, who of you is using a PLM solution today? A few. Fusion Lifecycle by accident? Yeah, no? Something else? OK. Good, some of you. Well, that's good.

So most of you are quite familiar with a product lifecycle. This is a simplified one. You start with the specification. Then you go to an engineering phase, production, prepare the model or the bill of material for production, do some production, and actually you do installation services.

I know it's a kind of simplification of a product lifecycle, but it's just to paint a picture here. And most of you know about the engineering phase. You've got the engineering phase where you're using CAD and PDM-- CAD to create innovative products, creating geometry, drawings, doing simulation, creating complex structures, linked information, and so on. And all this information needs to be managed within a good way using a PDM system. I saw most of you are familiar with PDM, with Autodesk Vault. So you know this by heart.

But actually, if you look at the product development cycle, it's not only about engineering. There is a phase before engineering where you specify actually your product. And a lot of other people are involved there. So you've got stakeholders, like sales, maybe customers, and other people there.

And at the back end in the preproduction and production and service, even more people are involved in that phase. And what we see there typically is that there are other technologies popping up, like typically CRM, your Customer Relationship Management tool, but at the back end, the ERP system to actually drive production, and so on.

But what I see, I think a lot of you have an ERP system. I don't know. Today, everybody is having that, more or less. But what I see is that besides all this system, still a lot of information is not managed within systems. Think about the concept [? RFY, ?] at the front end, maybe requirements. But at the back end, for example, your quality management, your quality reports, audits, non-conformancies-- how are these things all managed? It's a big question.

And what I see that people do today, they are using a kind of generic tool, a generic tool like Excel to manage all this data. Isn't it? Yeah? Yeah, hundreds of Excels, even Excels that manage Excels. Because otherwise, they can't track it down. Yeah, I see you laughing. Sorry, but it's what I see in my day-to-day visits with customers.

And at a certain moment, you want to communicate this and have a process around it. And you're using email, emailing back and forth hundreds of Excel files. And if you want to email it externally, you're creating PDFs through the Excels because you don't want that people externally are touching the data, or even internally or using project tools.

To manage all this data, there is PDM coming into sight. PDM will actually integrate and connect the data to the processes that are in place, to your business processes, like change management, non-conformancy management, sales to engineering. These kind of projects, that's what you actually want to manage within a PLM system.

So if you look at all this picture, what's important to see is that today, a lot of these systems are on-premise systems, meaning that your CAD and PDM system, of course, is on premise, but also CRM, ERP. That makes it also quite difficult to include stakeholders outside of your business.

Now, our PLM solution, Fusion Lifecycle, resides in the cloud. It's born in the cloud. It gives it the ability actually to make it a global system, include stakeholders like customers, like suppliers, like third-party contributors to the whole process. And what we don't want to do with a PLM system is to replace all these other systems like CRM, ERP. That's not made for it. It's made to integrate the systems and make this data available throughout the workflows, and made the connections of this data so that the right people at the right time have the right data. That's what PLM stands for.

OK, let's zoom into just PDM as a first step. PDMs, what requirements are we fulfilling actually with PDM? Well, most of you know that already. So actually, PDM is out there to manage engineering data. It's something that is residing within an engineering environment.

Engineering data can be quite complex, meaning a lot of links. I think most of you are using Inventor today, yeah? You know how it goes-- assembly, part, [? link ?] up, and you've got a product.

So we are managing the data within a PDM system like Autodesk Vault and enabling actually your team to also concurrently work on the data by introducing principles like check-in, check-out, file-locking, permissions on the files, and so on. So we are really managing all drawings, models, assemblies within that system, but also controlling the metadata within the system-- so all information needed for the engineer to work on these projects.

And what's important for the engineers in their day-to-day work is that actually, a PDM system should be almost invisible, helping them in their day-to-day workflows. So the integration of a PDM system within a CAD system is really key and is also actually the value that is needed to succeed with a system like Autodesk Vault.

If you look at the other side, the product lifecycle management system, this has a completely other set of needs that are required there. So you will see that we are capturing, actually, the whole process from concept phase, throughout production, services, maintenance, installation. So it's a broader scope there.

You will see that other people are involved there, like you've got the salespeople that need to access that data. You've got the production people, contractors, whatever. A lot of stakeholders need to have access in that system. And that is something that we can make possible by having a really flexible system, an easily accessible system, that connects not only the data that's important for the product development process, but also the processes and even the systems that are used within the whole lifecycle of your product.

And we do that in an automated way. So what's important here, what's the requirements for a PLM system like Fusion Lifecycle, is that it must be really simple to set up, to maintain. It must be really easily accessible because some of the stakeholders are just using that maybe once or twice a week. Whereas a PDM system, that's constantly used by your engineers. So it's completely different setup.

And apart from that, both products, they have also a different scope, completely different scope. Product data management-- engineering-focused, engineering data management actually. So on the desktop of your engineer-- completely seamless integrated in your CAD system, managing the engineering documents, versioning, giving them also tools to actually work with the data, reuse data. Like, Copy Design is a very powerful tool within Autodesk Vault. In that case, you actually-- a lot of value, but it's document-centric, engineering document-centric.

If you look at the scope of Fusion Lifecycle, as I said, it's broader. A lot of people involved. And actually, what you see is there, you will see that the bill of materials is a driver for all these processes. So the bill of materials will be the source. The items in the bill of materials will be source that leads actually into all these processes, like change management, non-conformancy, sales to engineering, quality management, new product introductions and so on, but also supplier collaboration, so external collaboration.

And it's all about automation and processes. One side is document-centric, highly integrated. The other side is about automation and the processes around the data, OK? Good.

What's important-- and I'm lighting them up-- is that we've got some overlap. Maybe you saw that already. But these are actually the touchpoints for the solutions. Within your PDM tool, you have also the bill of materials-- your engineering bill of material, actually.

And the engineering bill of material will be the starting point for the bill of materials that you're going to use within your product lifecycle solution, meaning that this bill of material can be completely different from the bill of material that you will have there. Because you are going to create a production bill of material, including maybe software or an electrical bill of material in there. So that's important there.

And then you see we've got, within Vault, also the notion of engineering change orders. Within PLM, you've got also change management. There is also touchpoint because change management is much more than just engineering change. Change can be a lot. Sometimes, engineering is not involved. So these two areas, these are the two touchpoints for actually both solutions. Good.

This leads me into, how can we actually combine these two best-in-class solutions? How can we make them work seamlessly together? Well, if you look at a process diagram, this is a process diagram from Fusion Lifecycle. There are a lot of processes already in place out of the box, workflows in place. This is a process diagram that you get.

You see boxes like items, change management, change order, quality control, problem reports, audits, design review. All these kind of boxes, you will see them. So where fits Autodesk Vault here? And that's actually here. You will see, within PDM, we are creating CAD files. And the CAD files, actually, they will lead into documents within Fusion Lifecycle so that stakeholders that don't have access to Vault can actually have access to the documents in a kind of viewing format.

Automatically, we will create, out of these documents, out of the CAD files, out of the engineering BOM, items within Fusion Lifecycle. And these items in the bill of material that's attached to it will actually be the source of all the other processes around here.

And as said, change order and ECO are actually touchpoints here. You will see that a change order, if there is a mechanical change for the engineers needed, can lead into an engineering change order. And that engineer change order will drive, actually, the change on your CAD files. And then the circle is round. So that's where, actually, Autodesk Vault fits in the whole lifecycle. Good.

So let's have a look in bit more depth about how such a workflow can flow between Fusion Lifecycle and Vault. In this example, I'm going to start with creating a new product or project within Fusion Lifecycle. That's normally the starting point. You're getting requirements or you've got a sales inquiry coming in, popping in, and you have the need to create a new product or a project. So that's the starting point here in Fusion Lifecycle.

For this specific product, some engineering work needs to be done. So what we are going to do is actually create a kind of project environment within Vault, a project folder with a specific folder structure. So the engineer starts working on it. He will create the geometry, the inventor files, drawings, documents, references. Bill of material will be created within the Vault side. And at a certain moment, that will be approved, and this data will be then pushed in a read-only mode to Fusion Lifecycle so it's available for the broader organization.

So we will push geometry. Actually, it's more the metadata that we are going to push so that people can search on it, link to it, drawings. And then also the document searcher will be synced to Fusion Lifecycle.

Along with the properties and information, we can also send extra documents. It can be a preview, like sending over DWF file. But it can also be the native file if you really want. I don't want to advise that, but I had customers that really want to share native files through Fusion Lifecycle, but actually also deliverables like STEP files, VXF files, or even just links to the Vault side. Once this data is synced into Fusion Lifecycle, automatically, we will create the items in the items and BOM workspace, and the engineering BOM will so be created on the item side.

Next step for preproduction work actually is to actually create your production BOM, and including, as I said before, maybe a software line. Like, OK, this is a software code coming from a subversion directory or an ECAD bill of material coming from another system. So that's what Fusion Lifecycle actually can do, aggregate that to one product BOM. And that can be then released within Fusion Lifecycle, and so on.

Next up there is, out of the items that are there, a problem can be reported by service or by a customer. It can be captured within Fusion Lifecycle and then drive the whole chain cycle through a change request and a change order. And as said, if the change order or the change includes a mechanical change and engineering is needed, this can then actually drive a change order within Vault. So this is, more or less, the overview of how everything can be tied together.

And all these orange arrows actually are integration points within the solution. Good. Just going to drink a bit. No chocolates? No questions yet? Oh.

AUDIENCE: Can you integrate your ERP bill of material and push, from Fusion Lifecycle, the improved BOM to your ERP system?

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah, you can. Actually, we-- yeah. So you can integrate, as I said, whatever system with Fusion Lifecycle. It's made to integrate with several systems. But that's the typical workflow, actually. So you can actually easily connect that to your ERP system, yeah.

Good. It's a chocolate [INAUDIBLE]. Do you want chocolate? I promised it. Good question. I hope it survived the journey to here, but I don't know. Another question? I'm taking my chocolate already.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: So it means the changeover is started in Fusion, and then the workspace is linked to the engineering change order involved.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: And the items involved are not turned on.

PETER VAN AVONDT: That's correct, but I will talk about that later on.

AUDIENCE: OK.

PETER VAN AVONDT: That's good. Well, it was a good question. [LAUGHS]

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Perfect catch, almost. Yeah, I've got only 24 of these.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Well, I'm not sure if this is the right time, but we're getting ready to consider this product. What I've been most concerned about is not only the engineering world, but, like you illustrated, the rest of the company. One of the things that would make it easier to really adapt that and have it be successful-- because I'm concerned about other parts, other departments-- that it's a little bit still too engineering-minded of a process for interfaces. And that's kind of what I'm--

PETER VAN AVONDT: OK.

AUDIENCE: But we can delay the answer.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah, yeah, I think it's good to have a delayed answer on that one. But actually, we can capture a lot of processes within-- I'm now focusing on the engineering bit of it, but you can capture a lot of processes. Yeah.

One of the powerful things of Fusion Lifecycle is that you can actually implement it in a really agile way. You don't have to go the full Monty first, but just start with the small bits. Like, for example, if quality management is a problem within your company, you can start with that workspace and work around that and capture that information. And that can be completely disconnected from your engineering workflows at that moment but, later on, integrated within the workflows. So good. I'm going further because otherwise, you won't get to the party. Good.

For the solution, I also included a slide about how we actually created the integration. And what we are using within Fusion Lifecycle are what I call workspaces. And standard workspaces within the Fusion Lifecycle are, for example, the products workspace that are capturing all information about products. We've also the change order workspace.

And what we are going to do within integration is actually use some standards groups within the environment and using, within Fusion Lifecycle, job queue to capture these events that needs to lead into an event on the Vault side. It's actually a bit mimicking the job queue from Vault for those who are familiar with Vault.

And what we have in place here is Autodesk job processor, a server component that actually pulls to that job queue and see if there is anything changed on the job queue and execute on that job. So it's a scheduled job. That's something new in Vault 2019, by the way, that's just pulling via the standard REST API of Fusion Lifecycle for jobs and execute on that job within Autodesk Vault. So it will interact with the files, with the folders, creating folders, creating ECOs.

But also, the other way around-- if you're doing something in Vault, like releasing a file or another event, we can fire off jobs to the job processor to actually communicate back to Fusion Lifecycle. That's more or less the architecture-- so a bit looking into the hood where all magic happens. But that's what we are actually putting in place.

You will see we've got CAD files, CAD drawings workspace. All these workspaces are created new. The white ones are the ones we have in place. We modify it a bit. We added some fields, which is quite easy to do, just to capture information from Vault, extra information.

You can map properties between all these workspaces between Vault and Fusion Lifecycle so the right information is available for the right people at the right time. So this is more or less how the architecture looks like, just a short overview.

But what is the characteristics of the integration? First of all, all native engineering data stays within your Vault side. You will need to have the performance. But in many cases, people want to keep their IP about engineering locally. But what we are uploading to Fusion Lifecycle is actually document properties, but also viewables like DWF files, or other derived formats like STEP files and whatever.

Then discussion about items, yeah? Do we turn on items on Vault Professional or not? Both are possible. Within the solution I'm going to show, we decided not to turn it on on the Vault Professional side. Because in principle, items are actually the start of all your processes within Fusion Lifecycle. So it's better, in my opinion, to have it in one single location. But if needed, you can actually create integration between the items in Vault Professional. If you're using items today, maybe it's better just to have integration on that side.

And then we try to combine the UIs so that engineers are actually working within the same environment. So they will have access to Fusion Lifecycle information, extended information about their processes and data within the actual Vault interface. But also, we are uploading, as you can see, information to the item of Fusion Lifecycle.

And it's a completely automated process. We're using the job processor that's running on the job server. Everything is captured on the events. So there is no user interaction when uploading or downloading information from Fusion Lifecycle to Vault or vice versa, OK? Good.

Let me see. How much time do I have left? I've got 25 minutes. Perfect. I'm going to show you some live demos here about the integration. So what I'm going to show you is, first of all, a new product introduction leading back to this schematic, starting from creating a new product. We'll create folders. We will create some geometry, push that geometry out there, and then actually release a bill of material.

So that's the new product introduction workflow. The second one I want to show is the change management workflow, where we've got a problem report that leads into a change request, a change order that finally leads into an ECO and updates, actually, the data. Push that back to Fusion Lifecycle so you've got an updated version of Fusion Lifecycle. Good.

Let's start here. This is Fusion Lifecycle for those who are not familiar with it. This is actually your dashboard. You can put whatever data on it, just have real-time insight in your projects. Here, you've got some insights on change orders going on. You've got product spread, for example. All this information is available here in your Fusion Lifecycle environment.

You see, underneath, you've got an outstanding work list, things that you have to do. We still have to do a lot of things, as you can see. So yeah, that's what happens if you're a week in Vegas. You can't get to do everything. So that's actually what you have when you entered the system here.

Now, with Fusion Lifecycle, I said we are creating workspaces. Depending on what processes and information you want to capture, you can divide it within different workspaces. I'm just going to jump to the project workspace. You can also have the sales inquiries, requirements, gathering, and so on as a separate workspace. I just want to create a new product here.

And you will see, this is the list of products or projects that are generated here. And what I can do is just create a new product here. You will see these are all web-based forms, forms to capture information. So what we are going to do is an AU [? Volve ?] Creation, like this. It's from a custom business unit. It has to be done by today.

And what you see here, I've added here a tick box to create actually the engineering projects within Vault. I'm just going to classify it a bit. Like, OK, this is a pressure valve with a certain nominal diameter, and so on.

So this web form is actually completely configurable. And what I already did is added some extra fields to capture information that's coming back from Vault once the project has been created. So I'm just going to save this here. And you will see we will have a new project created here.

There are some extra steps. So you can already create a bill of materials for this project, or tasks and deliverables. Some milestones are automatically set up. Everything has to be done by today. So everything is actually ready to go.

But at the back end, what happened is that I've captured that event of the creation of a new product. With this tick box on, I've created, actually-- and I'm just going to jump to my job queue workspace here. I've created a job within my job queue workspace. And this is particular to the integration.

The integration will create a job. So you see there are already a lot of jobs processed here. So we are not only capturing what's this job about-- so it's a Vault Create Folder job. But we're also capturing the status within this list.

So this list will be processed actually locally by your job processor. This is the Vault job processor, as such. But before turning this on, I just want to go back to the list here. You see, there are already a few projects created.

If I go to Vault here, you will see some of these projects reside into a folder. The newly created project is the 91. Last created one here is 90, my test project just before I entered this class.

So let's turn on the job processor, just kick them in the ass. Oh, there we go, and he will actually create the folder in here. So what happens at the Fusion Lifecycle side, if I just click F5 here to refresh the page, you will see it will actually alert me that the job is processed and that the folder has been created. So we are really capturing also what's happening with the job queue within Fusion Lifecycle.

Now, going back to Vault here, I'm just going to refresh my window here. You will see that we have a new project created here, the 91 project. And underneath the project, a standard folder structure has also been created out of a template. So we're really creating a project space out of a project that has been created within Fusion Lifecycle. Good.

As said, we are also giving the ability to actually the engineer to access the data from within-- oh, I forgot to log in. Sorry for that-- so to actually access the data from within their Vault browser. Yeah, never forget to tick this box. Always forget to keep me signed in. But without leaving their PDM application, they can actually access all the information, extended information about the project like project milestones. The milestones, this is information that we are not carrying over to Vault but resides within the project over here.

So also, the approval workflow and so on can be accessible from here. And they can drive it through the whole system. Good.

So as an engineer, I'm going to do some engineering work here. I've got the template assembly. I'm just going to make a copy out of this using the tools that we have within Autodesk Vault to make just copies. I'm just going to copy not the standard components, but just the ones I need. I'm going to copy them to the new project here within the engineering phase. And this is standard Autodesk Vault. I think everybody knows how this works.

So I'm just going to create a copy so I can release that to manufacturing or to Fusion Lifecycle. Good. Once done, just have a look what's happened here. So I've got a new set of data in here.

And actually, to push that to Fusion Lifecycle to synchronize that with Fusion Lifecycle, we have integrated this custom job to push that to Fusion Lifecycle on the release of the documents. So what happens within your job queue, a lot of jobs are created, updating the files, updating the properties, creating the visualization files, and then uploading the files within the Fusion Lifecycle.

I'm just going to start a job queue here again. And at the back end, it will do the upload of all the information. So let's have a look what happens within Fusion Lifecycle, then. So within Fusion Lifecycle, we have created these two extra workspaces-- CAD files, CAD drawings-- within your product development.

And what actually will happen is that all files will be uploaded, or the information about the files will be uploaded within this workspace-- like this one, for example. So you will see that we have a preview available of the file. We have all the data available that is mapped. Some things are not mapped here. Well, you can do mappings between both solutions. You've got information about engineering release.

But you will see that we have also a set of links, and links to the Vault directly from within here. You can jump to the file. You can go to actually the thin clients. So it will open up the file within the thin client. So dependent on how you want to give people access to the files, you can configure that one. I'm just going back to this one.

But at the back and in the meanwhile, you see that the new files are created in here. So meanwhile, it's uploading. But this was the moment I wanted to ask you to switch off your phones, but it's OK. It's going all right. It's going all right.

So apart from that, we're also uploading some extra files to the visualization file, for example, using the large model viewer to visualize this model. Depending on bandwidth, it will maybe take a bit to create this one. So well, we'll see later on if it's possible to load it.

But also, the actual CAD structure is coming over. This is the bill of material from the CAD files. Good. Let's see if it's processed already. It's going to be faster now, hopefully.

And this is completely automated. So I only have to start off the job processor. But normally, the job processor is running on a server constantly. And just because I've got a desktop here, I had to just pause it and give it a go. Well-- yeah?

AUDIENCE: Rather than having a dedicated job processor to the [INAUDIBLE]-- because we have job processors running those types of jobs as well. [INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah, that depends on how much-- so the question was about, do you recommend to have several job processors for Fusion Lifecycle? It really depends on how much load that your job processor is actually at the moment. So that's really difficult to say. It's not loading here.

AUDIENCE: I have a question.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah?

AUDIENCE: Just to be clear, this job processor, is that using a third-party connector?

PETER VAN AVONDT: No. No.

AUDIENCE: So that's due in 2019? OK.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah. So we're just using the standard job processor with some custom jobs on top of it.

AUDIENCE: How difficult is it to configure [INAUDIBLE], making the links between [INAUDIBLE] and stuff?

PETER VAN AVONDT: It's not that difficult to configure, actually. So yeah, there is a-- well, I recommend, if you want to go this way, you have to work with one of the certified partners, actually, to do some kind of implementation of this. And they will help you out. It's not that it's a sellable product. It's not a plug-and-play product. So that's quite important to know.

So in the meanwhile, I guess my new-- this is the new one. It has been uploaded. One of the links you will see also is we are uploading the drawing. The drawing is residing in the drawing workspace. We've chosen to create a separate workspace here. It's not necessary, but we're capturing other information on this one. So that's something we are doing.

So all this information-- so you can jump back and forwards to the CAD-related-- CAD component. Everything is linked together. But at the back end, we're also automatically creating items out of it. So once you release your CAD information, an item has been created within the items and BOMs workspace of Fusion Lifecycle.

And the items and BOMs workspaces, as you can see, we've enhanced it with some engineering data. You can see what are the linked CAD file and 2D drawing, even direct links to your CAD information and so on. But we also have the bill of material available here.

And you will see, the components that are now in this bill of material, these are all CAD components-- [INAUDIBLE] you see CAD components, yeah? So it's coming from your EBOM. But you can add extra components in here and actually do the release of that one.

So what we've done, we've released an assembly and a drawing within Vault. This is ultimately synced to your Fusion Lifecycle environment, which is dedicated to workspaces like the CAD files, CAD drawings. And at the back end, it creates automatically also the items, the bill of material here.

So yeah, next step here is actually to release these data, release the items. This is just a release cycle. So what I need to do within Fusion Lifecycle is initial-- initial, there we go-- release. Just make a process out of it because normally, you have to go through several steps to actually release a product within your company. Well, I've got a fast track here because we don't have that much time anymore to show everything here.

So I can create, actually, a change order, saying, OK, this is the first to release, and I want to push that in. I'm going to actually release all the related items in one go. So I'm just going to include all children in this change order so that everything is released and gets a revision attached to it.

And then last step here is just say, OK, I'm going to say this is first release. Save that on. And you will see, within this release change order, you will have specific approval workflows where you've got several steps. So these workflows are completely configurable. We can modify them. There are some workflows out of the box, but you can put whatever workflow in there with rules and so on. So it's highly configurable to capture every single business process.

I just released it. What happens here at the back, everything is On Release, as you can see. And if I go to the item here, you will see that it has a revision A and a working version now. So it's released, ready to go to production.

Maybe I was a bit too fast here. As a step within this change order, it can also be pushed to ERP. There was a question about ERP. So as a step, this information can also be pushed, throughout the process, to ERP.

So this was the first bit. I'm just going to go back. Actually, this was the bit of front product to actually go to the production BOM. The second one I wanted to show is actually the change workflow.

The change workflow starts with a problem report. A field agent or a field service engineer comes with a problem from a customer. That leads into a change request and actually a change order, and needs to have a modification be done on the engineering side.

Good. Let's go back in here. What we have here is a specific workspace to do change management. And you see Problem Reports. So we have a problem report residing in here. If you go to Problem Report here, once a problem report has been created, you will get also a notification email, notification email that will have a link to this. So now I'm jumping directly to the workspace. But normally, as a manager of these project reports, you will be notified on this.

So here, there's a problem with some of the guides. You can have attachments in here. So the bandwidth was not that-- so it could be taking a bit. So it's going to load the attachments here-- so just a picture of what the issue is. And so a field engineer is on place. There's still some-- come on. Yeah, it's a challenge here. So just switch off your phones, please. It's not going to show you, OK.

But actually, behind this problem report, a complete workflow is here. So it has been created with an initial review. Then there is a technical review. That technical review will decide if it's going to be a CAPA, Corrective and Preventive Action, that needs to be in place, or an [? ECI ?] change request.

And in this case, we have chosen to spawn this actually to change request. So here, you can say, OK, on approval, generate the change request. So from the problem report, this leads into a change request. In the change request, we can do, for example, option analysis where you say, OK, how can we solve this? Are we going to redesign the whole housing because there is a capitation problem, or are we just going to modify the whole pattern, for example, of the unit here? And what's the cost, and so on?

And that leads into another approval workflow, as you can see, where several steps are taken. You've got maybe a change order board, at a certain moment, complete. And even this one is extended to alert Navision that there is a change on the way. For example, it was a customer requirement that a customer wanted, in the ERP system, to have a flag over that there is a change going on on certain things.

So from here, it will actually automatically create a change order, the next step in the whole change process. I know I'm going really fast through this. Normally, the process of doing changes is not something you do in a few minutes, taking a bit more time in here. But actually, here, you've got the change order. And the change order actually can be edited. And for example, we can-- yeah?

AUDIENCE: Can you have multiple change orders for one problem, or is there only one?

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In this case, yeah, it's a simplified thing. But you can have multiple change orders for one problem, yeah. Yeah, of course. Good. Don't forget to take your-- at the end. I'm going to do the rest of the demo.

I'm going just to add some of the newly created-- so this is the new [INAUDIBLE] file I've uploaded here. I'm going to add that one in here to make the changes on. I'm going to also add-- I forgot to tick that one. I'm just going to add one of the children in here. It's searching on it. Oh, I forget one. I need to search for all of them, of course.

So I get the list of children of these items. And what I'm going to change is the guide in here. So I'm going to send that to engineering. So you can actually, within the change order, collect already which items are going to be changed within the workflow.

And once that has been done, I'm just going to send this to engineering. I can have some comments on it-- so for the audit trail because everything is audited. So you can always have some traceability within the system.

And what will happen is actually, once again, we're just sending that to engineering. If I go to my job queue here at the far end, a new job will be introduced. And actually, this job will create in the change order, engineering change order within Vault. So if I go to my job processor and just start it again just to-- it will actually find a job in the job queue. And just go over here. Report back. Hopefully everything is fine. Yeah, it's here, created in Vault.

So actually what happened is that on the Vault side, if I refresh here and go to my change order list, a new change order has been introduced. That's this one, yeah? This change order, 140, has all the information in it. It says, OK, it's a functional quality issue. Priority's high. Some information about Fusion Lifecycle, and so on.