eBOM to mBOM: BOM Transformation Across PDM, PLM, ERP, and MES

MARCO MIRANDOLA: Welcome to this AU class. The topic, today, is BOM transformation across PDM, PLM, and ERP and MES systems.

So we're going to talk about the Bill of Material and how the Bill of Material will move between PDM, ERP, MES, and PLM system. But before we get started, just a question why we choose this topic. Well, so we get confronted with this question quite a lot over the last years. Can you transfer the Bill of Material? Can you transfer a manufacturing-like bill of material? And we have variations of these questions, like can you deal with indentation? What about phantom or operations, routings? And my favorite one is, which ERP system should I choose?

So let's see what I can answer, a couple of these questions in this session. My name is Marco Mirandola. I am Chief Vision Officer at coolOrange, and coolOrange is a company, a software company, focused on connecting the design teams with the rest of the company.

We focused, over the last years, on connecting Vault with different ERP systems and EUCS selection. You know, we are based in Europe and in US. We have customers around the globe, and we're not limited just to Vault and ERP. We also connect with TLM and with MES system, and so on so forth. So everything where the design team basically can and should collaborate with other departments, it is where we feel home.

Now, to make the presentation, today, less theoretical and more practical, I have here with me an old friend of mine, Albrecht. Albrecht, if you like to make a short introduction?

ALBRECHT TROGMANN: I am Albrecht Trogmann. I am Project Manager at Tanzer Maschinenbau, and I'm within the company since 27 years, now. As a project manager, I'm responsible for the success of projects and for the implementation of new software solutions. Over the years, I have introduced Inventor, Vault, ERP system, MRP system, and, soon, an MES system.

Tanzer Maschinenbau was founded in 1988 as a custom machinery manufacturer, and the company has grown from a small team of just 12 employees to an organization of, yeah, with over 100 employees. We, meanwhile, produce small series of machines and build automation for washing depots for foldable crates. Those crates, after their use, with return to logistics centers, must be cleaned and sorted by size.

This movie shows an example of such a logistics center. There, the crates will be depalletized, destacked, opened, closed, sorted, stacked, dried, and palletized again. Worldwide, we have over 50 of such installations in 15 different countries.

One of the machines in our portfolio is the box closer. The job of the box closer is to close that foldable crates. The movie, here, shows the process of this machine. Open crates enter from the left side and will be closed by a rotating hammer, which hits the crate walls to unlock and close them. The rotating hammer is perfectly synchronized with the transfer belt to perform this process as smooth as possible, without damaging that crate.

But the subject of today's class is not Tanzer machines, but the transformation of the Bill of Materials through the process of the company. We will take a closer look at the conveyor assembly and use its Bill of Materials as an example. If we look at the Inventor BOM, here, on the right side, it looks like a few parts in a structure. But, if we take a closer look to this BOM, we can see that this assembly is composed by sub-assemblies, weldment parts, sheet metal parts, machine parts, and purchased parts, and all these parts will need a different way through the company.

MARCO MIRANDOLA: Albrecht, thanks for sharing this assembly and for helping me setting up this class today. So we have, now, this Bill Of Material from this component, from this assembly you just shared with us, and we can claim that this bill of material is what we typically call an eBOM. So it's basically a BOM designed by the engineers. So it's an engineering Bill Of Material, right?

So the topic is the transformation of the BOM, and the transformation of the BOM implies that it goes from the eBOM, from the engineering BOM, into the mBOM, which is the manufacturing BOM. And, typically, the steps for transforming this Bill of Material can sort of be summarized in three steps. So one is adjusting, so it's about adjusting the layers and the levels, right. The second one is the detailing, so maybe adding operation and routings to the Bill of Material. And the third component is more related to the purchase or production Bill of Material, where we're going to add characteristics like color and treatment, and so on so forth.

So let's go a little bit deeper into these topics, and we're going to pick the first one, so the adjustment of the Bill of Material. In here, we have two components. So we have the manufacturability and the hierarchies.

So let's go into the manufacturability. So that means that the design has to be tweaked in order to suit manufacturing capabilities. For instance, we're going to have complex geometries which require expensive machining. And so, maybe by changing the geometry, we can spare some time and some money here or consolidate parts to reduce assembly time or even adjust tolerances or reduce costs, change manufacturing methods to reduce the cost, and so on.

So I have a question for you all. Right, I'm coming from the software development, so I'm a software geek. But when I'm reading all these things or thinking about this thing, it feels to me like this is actually something that the designer should actually already know and integrate in his design. What is your feeling about that?

ALBRECHT TROGMANN: Yes, I'm with you with that. Our designers continuously check how the components will be manufactured and assembled. In my opinion, this process has nothing to do with the BOM or the BOM structure.

MARCO MIRANDOLA: OK. Thank you for that opinion. By the way, it's not just your opinions because, in the preparation of this class, I spoke also with other customers. And, actually, most of the customers, they say that a designer, to some extent, even if it's a junior designer, to some extent, he has to understand how this stuff is going to be built downstream in the shop floor.

But let's talk about the hierarchies. So, in this case, we're talking about phantom or purchased parts. So we have this questions where people are coming back and say, hey, I have to define this component as a phantom in my ERP system so that the children of this assembly are basically going to be leveled up one level, and know, they reduce this additional layer. You may understand that because every assembly has an impact on the inventory and the way that you're going to produce and manufacture the component.

But the thing is that, inside of Inventor, I do have this Defeature function. And I also, inside of Inventor, have the ability to, for instance, insert a complete assembly. You know, let's say a piston that has components, right? So I can have the assembly with components, and I can use that for making my test and so on. But then, if I classify that assembly as a purchased part in the Bill of Material, the children are basically ignored.

So here, again, my question. Is this something that you guys are using in your design?

ALBRECHT TROGMANN: Well, indeed, we use this a lot. It helps us to structure the BOM the way that it suits the production process.

MARCO MIRANDOLA: OK, thank you. So then let's go to the next topic. The next topic is raw material. Inventor is not capable to manage raw material, and that's fine. But, you know, to complete my Bill of Material I may have the need at a certain point to add my raw material. So let me roll, here, this little video that shows you basically how, for instance, through powerGate, which is our product. You can actually run a search against your ERP system right from within Inventor and then basically pick one of the raw materials and, for instance, apply to the component. Right?

So what happened is that, now, we stored information into iProperties. And then, later, when we're going to transfer the Bill of Material, we use these iProperties then to build the Bill of Material inside in the ERP system.

So we spoke about the adjustment of the Bill of Material, and we understand that manufacturability is something related to designer and knowledge. The hierarchy is something that we actually can handle with Inventor. Well, let's move forward, and let's talk about operations and routing.

So we have here, again, two of your components. Just as an example, we have a sheet metal part and we have a weldment part. The sheet metal part has operations like cutting, deburring, bending, treatment, surface treatment, painting, and so on and so forth. The weldment has a pre-assembly, a welding, a cleaning, and inspection, and so on. So this is something that I typically not do inside Inventor. So is this something that belongs to the design team, or is it more going into the shop floor? What is your opinion, Albrecht?

ALBRECHT TROGMANN: Clearly, the designer must distinguish between machined parts, sheet metal parts, weldment parts, and so on. But operations and routings are shop floor's responsibility.

MARCO MIRANDOLA: OK. So thank you for that.

Then the next point is routing, which is a sort of a different view on the operation. So the routing basically combines different operations. But, of course, it also defines the route, the flow that the component has to take down into the shop floor. Right? So we have, here, a sheet metal, a weldment, and a machined part, and we see that it has different steps. And maybe the sequence of the step is different, and so on and so forth.

So even these are things that, by all means, you're not going to enter in your Inventor, so this information cannot come out of Inventor. But let me go to a couple of features that we have discussed so far. So these are the features that Inventor and Vault provide out of the box.

So, in Inventor, I have the ability to select between different templates, like Sheet Metal and Standard and Weldment. And so, by doing this, the system already knows when this component will become a sheet metal, weldment, or a regular component. Right? But then we also have the ability to influence the BOM structure of Inventor by defining whether a component or assembly is a normal, inseparable, purchased, phantom, or external reference, and so on.

Now, the interesting thing about this is it's affecting the Bill of Material of Inventor already. But the other thing is that if I then inset in Vault, make a small configuration-- so I create a custom property, for instance, Subtype, and I'm going to map that subtype to the Document Subtype property from Inventor-- the outcome is that I can actually derive different categories and basically categorize the files or categorize the items inside in Vault. And so the information, which type of component or assembly we're touching, is already available inside in Vault, and I think this is great.

So let me quickly show you how this looks like. OK, we're here inside in Vault. We're going to make an Assign Item. In this case, we're going to use the Vault items, but this is not 100% necessary. We will talk about that toward the end. But, for the sake of this presentation, we use the item here.

And you see, already, that the BOM looks like a Christmas tree. So it has a lot of different colors, and we see Sheet Metal and Weldment, and so on so forth, and that's exactly the thing that I mentioned before. So these features are available inside in Inventor. And, if well-used, they can actually propagate it to Vault and then, from there, again, propagate it down to ERP and MES system.

So, talking about BOM, Albrecht, what I did is I took your assembly-- so thank you, again, for sharing it-- and I made basically two variations. The one on the left, so the one here, is your assembly, but I removed all the settings that you guys are classically doing. Right, so I removed all the phantom and all the BOM structure, components, and so on and so forth. So this is basically the Bill of Material as it comes from Inventor without using any features of Inventor, the one we saw before.

The one on the right-hand side is, again, the same machine, same Bill of Material. But, in this case, we did apply the features. And, actually, this is the way that you guys are typically working, so I just pushed a button and generated this Bill of Material.

So let's have a closer look because, despite the fact that we see the right-hand side is more colorful, we also notice that, especially at the top side, there's quite a difference in the structure. So we see the left Bill of Material, which is way more indented, there is more structure in, while the right one is more flattened. Let's go through it quickly.

So we have this little assembly here, on the left, that we also find on the right. Again, it's the same assembly, but we see that on the left-hand side is at the third level, it's nested at the third level. On the right-hand side, it's actually leveled up. Well, that's because the assembly, where it's built in-- it's actually this assembly, here-- was probably defined as a phantom. And so, basically, this assembly leveled up. But this assembly is not a phantom, so it retains the children.

So next one, here, we see these three components, and this is actually quite amazing because these components moved two levels up. So that means that the parent assembly is a phantom and the assembly where they are embedded is also a phantom. And so these children moved, actually, two levels up.

Then we see these three components, which also leveled up because the parent is an assembly. It is a phantom assembly, but they also got plated, just in terms of position. So we see they are still there in the same level, but the position numbers are basically just different, and so they're sorted in a different way.

And then this is also interesting. I see these two purchased parts-- so these are basically just regular screws, right-- which have been used with a quantity of three in one assembly and a quantity of four in the other assembly. And because Vault is using and understanding the concept of phantom and so on, what Vault did was basically level both components up, but also summarize them and basically do the math. So 3 plus 4 is 7, and we see, now, the quantity of 7 here on the right-hand side. And we also see, here, this little different icon, which tells me that this position came out from an addition of two different components.

So I like this. It's pretty amazing here.

Now, let's take the correct BOM, which is the right one, and let's, then, apply our concept of routing. So we spoke before that the routing is something that does not belong to the design team, and that's fine. But what we see here is that, if the design team uses properly the features of Inventor and Vault, it actually already prepares the bill, the Bill of Material, in a way that it can easily be shared, then, with the ERP system and the MES system downstream.

So let's move ahead, and let's talk about the last topic, which is about the customization. Here, we have a couple of points here. So the customization may require to add consumable items like lubricants and other stuff that required for the manufacturing process, and so on so forth. Then maybe the items have different batch or lot sizes.

Well, this is not really a BOM-related topic. This is more a logistic topic. You know, to produce that piece, we may produce 10 at a time. Or, if we ordered a piece, we need to order a minimum of 10, right, but it's not affecting the BOM.

The quantities, well, this is, of course, different because if the customer purchases three of your machines, then, of course, the quantity had to be multiplied by three. But maybe because of scrap and yield rates, the quantity may also change.

Then we have things like color and treatment. Of course, this is very specific to the purchase order or production order. And then we have the timing, where maybe a very urgent production of a machine requires that some items will be replaced with the identical shape, so identical item, but the different number because it's from a different supplier that maybe even is more expensive, but that supplier is capable to deliver the components in time for our delivery time. Right? So these are the thing that maybe may happen more in the situation of production and purchase and production side.

So let me add, here, a couple of more details. So let me go here and put one concept in here. Everything that we spoke at the beginning-- so manufacturability, hierarchy, operations, routing-- this is something that is applicable to the quantity of one or the quantity of many. It doesn't matter. So it does not matter who ordered the machine, whether it has been ordered or not. This is something that needs to be done every time, and this is why it's called master data. So this master data is not affected by the purchase order or the production order.

But then, when the order comes in, then we have a production order. And that production order made a copy out of our master data and then, in that copy, may have applied some changes like the multiplication of the quantity, but also color treatment and maybe even replacing some components because of timing and cost, and so on and so forth. Right?

So let me add one more thing, which is the question, which system belongs where? So the first two components, the first two things-- it's about manufacturability and hierarchy-- this is something that typically can be addressed with Inventor and Vault. Maybe not 100%, but quite close to it.

Then we have things like operation and routings, which is typically an MES activity, and we will talk about that later on. But then we see that all the other things, those are typical ERP activities, you know, just to understand a little bit what belongs in which bucket.

So talking about these systems, let me go through here through a list of features of the different systems. And we see, here, that the ERP system is actually very specific and very focused more on the financial aspects of the stock management, and so on. So it manages the stock, but it has more a financial interest. So it's managing supplier and costs and discounts and supplier time, and so on so forth. Right?

Then it goes into material requirement planning and production planning. This is typical MRP function. But, for simplicity, let's combine ERP and MRP as one thing. Right, we don't want to end up with 75 different software in the company. But then it goes into scheduling and shop floor monitoring, quality control, and this is where typically, then, the ERP system may have some lags. They start to not be as user-friendly, and so on, and they may lack in functionality, and so on, but that's because that is no longer their main purpose. The purpose for these activities or the right tool for this activities is actually the MES system. Right?

Then, at the end of this list, we see basically the PDM and the PLM system, which are taking version control and supporting production collaboration and the changement, the regulatory compliance, and so on and so forth. So point here is that, if you think about ERP, then many people think about everything. Right? But, effectively, we have to name the things properly. And don't blame the ERP system if it's not good in managing, for instance, the shop floor monitoring or the operational routing, and so on so forth. There is a system specifically for that called MES.

So let's go back to the original slide, where we said, OK, we have the BOM. It has to go through the different steps, the PDM, ERP, MES, and PLM.

OK, let's start with the PDM. And we see, here, that the design team that uses the PDM and CAD can provide an E-BOM Now, on purpose, I've wrote here the E as a capital E because I'm a strong believer that, if you use properly the Inventor and Vault features, the BOM that comes out from Inventor and Vault has already an almost correct structure, and it basically has a lot of additional information that are useful for the ERP and MES sides. So this is it's a BOM on steroids. It's a big-E BOM if you want, right?

Now, we're talking about BOMs, but we know that the BOM is made out of items. And this is where the interaction between PDM and ERP or CAD and ERP usually happens. So the need to transfer the outcome of the CAD system and PDM to the ERP system, but also the need to get access to, for instance, purchase parts, bulk items, raw material, and so on, in elegant way. We saw it before, and we will see it in a few minutes when we roll video. But this is where the two systems are basically dealing to each other.

Now, one thing that happened is that, within the ERP system, usually in the context of the production order, we then start seeing changes, transformations again, but usually they are not necessarily structural changes. It's more about replacing one item with another one because of timing, because of color. So depending on how the ERP system is managing, for instance, the variance-- variance in color, variance in surface treatment, and so so forth-- some systems are keeping the same number and basically just manage the variance. Some systems are actually really replacing one item with the other one, but the structure that came from the design department is actually still the same.

So the question is, now, where are we going to add the operation? Now, some ERP systems pretend to have routings and operations, but usually what they have is very weak. So the real system that is capable of handling this in a more efficient way is the MES system, by all means. Right?

Now, the question is, when is the MES system doing it? I mean, he needs the item as well, right? Are the items going to be transferred right away when the PDM push it to the BOM to the ERP, or is it later, later on? That's depend on how you want to manage it. But, at the end of the day, the operations and routings are basically applied on the MES system.

So the question is, what is the BOM that we're going to transfer now? Well, this BOM is effectively the mBOM. Even though, even here, we have to distinguish between the mBOM in his natural step or in his original form, right before the production changes have been applied and then the mBOM, which is specific for that specific production order. So there is not one mBOM. Where there is just one E-BOM, there might be multiple mBOMs. Every production order has his own variation, his own copy of the mBOM. So the question is, where is the mBOM really located? Is it really just the end form that goes down to shop floor, or is it the original one that is used as a template for producing the production order?

Anyway, the inventory management, so managing the stock, and so on, this is something that practically usually it's done in the ERP system. You can do it with the MES. The MES is also providing an inventory management system. But, at the end of the day, because the ERP system is the one that delivers the order to supplier, and so on.

When, then, the ordered material comes back to the warehouse, you have to track that shipment inside in the ERP system. Otherwise, you're running crazy. And at the end of the year, you have to do an inventory anyhow, and the ERP system is the one that leads that process and basically tells you, from a financial perspective, how much taxes you have to pay, and so on so forth. Right?

So another thing that happens is that, usually, the PDM is then sharing the items, the material, and the Bill of Material and the documentation with the PLM. Why? Well, you may have situations where you basically just share your PDF, DXF, and STEP files which are required for the shop floor on a network share. That's a classic way of doing it, but it's not under control. You don't know if people are going to delete, rename, move the stuff, and so so forth.

A better way of sharing that information is the PLM system. It's controlled. It provides more information. It handles even revisions, but everyone can really understand, am I working on the right version of the document. And this is why, typically, passing the document through the PLM system to the given departments, whether it's production, service department, purchasing, and so on so forth, it's actually a better way, a more secure way, a more controlled way of doing it.

But another interesting thing is that we described, now, the flow in one direction, but what happens if a problem occurs, if a change comes along? So this is where the PLM system can help again because it's the perfect system for tracking that change and managing the change across the whole company. Now, whether the change comes from the production, the service department, or supply chain, whatever, it doesn't matter. Tracking it in the PLM system, having the PLM system managing the change and then providing a change order back to Vault and have the Vault managing the revision, this is the more classic way, the more comfortable way, the more secure way. And, again, the PLM is typically available to everyone in the company, so that's the right place for handling it.

So, just in case you want to know a little bit more about how to handle document-- I mean, we spoke about BOM and items, so far, but if you have more interest about how the document should be shared across the company-- there is another AU class which I can suggest it to you to attend. You see it here. It's about Data-Driven Digitally Share CAD Data Through the Product Life Cycle, and so on.

So let's see all this theory in action. So I have a little video here which talks in Vault. We have this assembly. Albrecht, again, thank you for sharing. And we go into this assembly, and we want to add an item to a specific component. So we go to this component and say, OK, this component doesn't have an item yet. We look into our ERP, which is Business Central in this case. We see that there is no item yet existing.

So we go in the powerGate in the coolOrange integration, and we have this dialogue, fill it up. And, in real time, immediately, the item has been created. So there is no synchronization at all. Basically, the two systems are talking to each other. But the item is created, so I can also go ahead and, for instance, look for a raw material, so a piece of aluminum for creating this component, and I can basically search the ERP system, click, and insert.

I can also go ahead and Insert a purchased part. So for instance, we look for a weldment wire, and we can add it now as a virtual component into our assembly. So it's a piece that we do not design, but we want it to be part of our Bill of Material. And, in fact, if we go into the Bill of Material, we see it there with quantity 1. So this, basically, also becoming part of our eBOM.

So let's now go and assign the items. So, again, in this case, we're using the items. We'll talk about that toward the end of the session. And we see, again, here, the colorful item structure. And we can go to the item, and we see here additional tabs underneath for the ERP BOM and so on. So this is where we can now transfer the BOM. A dialog shows up, which loads the multi-level Bill of Material. And, in this dialog, we have the ability now to look for the items, to check if it's all OK or not. Maybe some items are missing.

In fact, we see a lot of items missing. And instead of creating them one by one, we can actually just bulk create them all in one shot. Right, so we just hit transfer, and he starts basically creating all the items. Go back into the ERP system. And, again, in real time, we see here the items are showing up with all information.

So let's go to the Bill of Material, and let's do the same. So we check the multi-level Bill of Material. We see that all levels are missing-- so this is a brand-new assembly, in this case-- and we do the same. We just hit Transfer and all the BOM levels are going to be transferred in one shot. And here, again, in the ERP, in real time, we see now the BOM has been created, and we basically have here the list of components, and so on.

So we also see, now, the BOMs are involved, which is nice. So I don't have to click or also switch between a system. And I also see the item information. So by clicking here on the different items, we see the data from the ERP system. So we can see Add and Create items directly from within Inventor and Vault, all in real time.

Meanwhile, the data has been also synchronized with our MES system, Prodsmart. So we see, here, all the items. And if we look, for instance, to our assembly, then we see that it also has a Bill of Materials structure. Now, the MES system has also operation, and it has routings, in this case, called process templates, sort of routing.

So let's go back, now, to two of the components, the sheet metal part and the weldment. So this is the sheet metal part. Now, let's open it up, and we will see that, under Operations, we have the routing automatically applied. The same will be for the weldment part. We will see that, by opening up, it has the routing for the weldment applied. This also comes back to this color coding that we have invoked. By passing the data, the system knew exactly which routing to apply.

So let's, now, approve and release our Bill of Material. And, by doing so, we generate a bunch of jobs, and the job processor is now executing those jobs, generating PDF, DXF, and STEP files and publishing the data also to PLM. Well, within the PLM system, we see here, now, that the items have been created, and we have the thumbnail, the description, all the details, the history. Everyone can access this information.

But we also-- if we go, for instance, on an assembly-- we also see here, for instance, there are some attachments like the drawing and PDF, DXF, STEP file, and so on. We see, also, a Bill of Material. Right? And so, in theory, all the data has been shared across all the systems, and we are good.

But, some time later, the belt loses the tension, and the holes of the tension plates are too short. So we have, now, to make a small modification. The best place for doing it is, again, the PLM system, so everyone has access. So whether it's a service guy or whatever, he noticed the problem, he goes to the given item, there it is with a thumbnail. And he starts, actually, from here a change order, or it could be a change request.

In this case, we're going straight into a change order. We give a description and say, OK, there is a problem with the belt tension, and so on. We give, then, some more detail, maybe a piece of video or a screenshot or whatever or an image, whatever we want to attach. And if we jump, now, to our change order, because we have attached this one item, automatically, it inherits the documents related. So if we see, here, the related attachment, we see the drawing.

And we can jump on it and open it up with a viewer and even add a markup here to the piece and say, hey, look, we have to adjust the length to 45 millimeters for the sake of this operation. Just retain the position, and then we're good, right? So I provide this information back to my design team. But, before I do so, maybe want to even add some tasks right and say, hey, guys, this must be done. Please adjust the tension belt problem.

And maybe the guy that has to do it is Marco, and it's high priority, and maybe there is a target start date and target end date. Whatever, right? So you can complete, here, the change order with all the details you want. And then you basically start the process. So we prepare it, and now we start and we perform the change.

Now, this state, Perform Change, will now trigger inside in Vault a new change order. And, in the change order, we now see the attached item and files. So we can make a quick change of the item. We're not bumping the revision, but we make a major change of the drawing and the assembly. So we bump the revision, here, from A to B, right, because it's a relevant change. So we want to have a different drawing with a revision B that basically describes precisely the change that we have.

So let's go to the drawing. Well, effectively, we go to the assembly but, in this case, we just start with the drawing and then open up the assembly. And we have, now, all the information. We have the change order. We have the markup. So we go into the assembly and make, now, the change. Go to 45 millimeters and move this, again, to retain the position, and so on.

And then we can release everything. And by doing so, again, jobs are triggered and generate the new PDF, DXF, and STEP and publish it. And now the change order, we can say, well, almost done. So we go to Approved, and we then finally close the change order and then approve, also, the item, and we're good to go.

So the new files are now available. They have been published to PLM, to Fusion 360 Manage. We see, here, the 45 millimeters, so looks good. And so someone on the PLM side can confirm and say, yes, the change has been fully completed and basically can close the change order and complete the task.

So this video, here, showed you how we moved from creating an item to the BOM transfer to the ERP system, the MES system, and so on. So let's recap quickly the highlights. There was a bunch of stuff here in this six, seven-minute video. The first thing is that we have seen that we are able to create items right from within Inventor. Right, this is through powerGate, and it allows me to have a direct integration between Inventor, Vault, and ERP system in real time, bidirectional, and so on, which allows me also to insert raw materials or search and insert for raw material or even search and insert bulk items purchased parts, and so on so forth.

It gives me the ability to process all the items at once, so I don't have to go one by one. I can also push down all the items, if that's applicable for you. We also have the ability to, then, process a whole machine in one step, with all the sub-assemblies. We don't have to go level by level. We can just push the whole machine in once. And it's not just only creating. It's also updating the Bill of Material in case and show you the delta, the difference between the two bills, Bill of Material.

Then it has, of course, the integration with the ERP system, which is the topic we just discussed so far, the integration also to the MES system, if you want, in the case of Prodsmart, and then, of course, the integration into the PLM system. So, by doing so, every system has the information he needs, and everyone in the company can work with his familiar system, working on the same data set and being sure that he's working with reliable data.

Talking about data just a second, I just made this three screenshots here. In here, you see the screenshot from Business Central, the ERP system, in this case, then the MES system, Prodsmart, and then Fusion 360 Management PLM system. These three screenshots are all about items, and the interesting thing is that you see that the ERP system is quite interested about inventory data, and so on so forth, while the MES system is more interested about timing and operations and cost and production activities, and so on. And the PLM system is more interested about the project-related information, about the overall state of the project, about the compliancy, and so on.

So all three are actually talking about an item, but they all three describe the item in a different way. And this is, again, if you think about the matrix that we have seen before, because every system has a different view on the item, different requirements. And, of course, the whole user interface and the user experience and the functions are built accordingly to solve specific problem within the company, even though it's all about items and it's all about the Bill of Material.

So just a few more things as a brain food-- and sorry for this long monologue, all right, but I have a question here for you. So it's about items, Vault items, yes and no. So let me, first, describe the benefits of the item, and I'm curious about your view here.

So working with items comes with quite some benefits. It comes with a cost in the sense that I have to manage the item and I have to sign the items. But if I do so, I basically have a distinction between the item and a file revision. And you may have not seen it in the video, but, in our case, we set up the file revision with letters, A, B, C, and the item revisions with numbers, 1, 2, 3, this just to avoid confusion between the revision of one versus the revision of the other.

And, in fact, in the example that we showed before, we bumped the revision of the files from A to B because we had a change that affected the component and the drawing, and we wanted to distinguish the revision A from the revision B of the drawing so that the shop knows exactly what is the right one. Right? But on the item side, you know, the item didn't change. It had the same BOM, it had the same description, the same characteristics. So there is no need to bump the revision of the item if the item physically does not have any change. Right?

I know some customers are doing it, and it's fine if they're doing it, but it's not mandatory. It's not needed. The system can handle it. Fun fact is that ERP system do not manage revisions at all. Typically, they don't. If they do, it's because they have been customized.

MES system, even less. They don't care about the revision. They care just about this production order.

So having the items involved gives you the ability to manage a technical revision of the Bill of Material. And by doing so and having, also, the item side, we have independent revisioning and history. So we have a history of file and history of the BOM. We also have the ability to complete the BOM involved.

So for those who are not capable to design a complete machine Inventor-- time, complexity, whatever-- they can create whatever they can and then pass the BOM to the item side of Vault and then finish it there manually. And then, of course, you can handle product-related information. It could be assembly instruction or specification or maybe a video or an image, or whatever it is. You can handle this, instead, in Vault or in the PLM system.

But, in both cases, it's attached to an item. The item is basically the centerpiece. It's doing everything together. It's all about the item number. That's the only language that the whole company is speaking, right?

And the last point is the ability to compare the BOM within Vault and also within PLM so you have this BOM Comparison feature. So, here, the question, Albrecht, are you guys at Tanzer using the items? Yes or no?

ALBRECHT TROGMANN: So, to be honest, we don't use them. But this has more a historical background. We first began using Vault workgroup, and there isn't a functionality, and so we have adapted all processes to work without. But I will not exclude that in a future expansion. We will introduce them then.

MARCO MIRANDOLA: OK. Thank you for this feedback. Effectively, you're not alone. I mean, there are many customers who had this situation, where the assembly is so simple that there is no need to build the item master, and they go straight into the ERP system. But then you have the other situation where it's more complicated, and the item master is effectively useful.

So another thing that I like to give you as brain food is, if you are looking for a new ERP system or you're thinking about your ERP system next version, and so on so forth, be clear about which problem are you trying to solve with that ERP system. So I don't know if this matrix may help you or not, but don't blame the ERP system for things that it's not supposed to do. Think about that even though the ERP system vendor, they probably will tell you that it can do everything, well, usually the system that can do everything do everything and not good, right, but not specifically good.

So think about what is your main problem. Do you have more logistics, financial problem? Then ERP is definitely the right solution. Are you having more a production problem? Then the MES system solution. Give a look into Prodsmart. It's quite interesting solution.

At the end of the day , one way or the other, you will have an ERP system and an MES system. The question is just, is it two different applications that, of course, have to talk to each other, or maybe it's a module within the ERP system that helps you also to do MES? And then, again, evaluate how good is that verticalization on that ERP system, given the fact that ERP systems are not meant to do shop floor operation activities, and so on.