FAQ
Do you support CMII change processes?
Yes, Aras Innovator is a CMII Certified tool, please see the ICM's web site http://www.cmiiresearch.com/tools.htm
Is where-used and affected item analysis supported?
A comprehensive Affected Items analysis tool was developed by Delphi Automative. This tool provides 2 functions (1) guides the user through good decision making regarding impact analysis of proposed changes and (2) keeps an audit log of decisions made. Delphi has donated this affected items wizard to the Aras Community project, and it is free-to-use by any company.
Change Requests on Documents/Data – provide the ability for users to raise requests for document/data changes, which will be logged in the document details and copied to the document owner. When the document/data undergoes its next revision, the list of change requests will be available and integrated into the next release
Included in the standard Aras Innovator certified Product Engineering solution. This solution follows the CMII standard http://www.icmhq.com but also can be modified to support company practices.
Change Notice – a form which is completed when a change is initiated, and details all the actions required as part of that change implementation e.g. if a plastic housing is changed then the part number needs a new revision level, drawings need to be submitted, validation testing needs to be performed, customer approval needs to be obtained, a decision is required as to whether existing stock is exhausted or scrapped
Included in the standard Aras Innovator certified Product Engineering solution. The CR and CN are two of the three standard forms in the CMII standard. The 3rd standard form (and workflow) is the Problem Report. See www.icmhq.com for more details.
Concession – a form which outlines a temporary change to a product. The Concession should have a defined end point, such as a date, or once a material has been exhausted. The Concession form should outline all the actions required as part of that temporary change implementation, and documents specific to that Concession may need to be attached to the form e.g. a rework Work Instruction
The Innovator community solution Quality Systems includes both a Waver and Deviation forms. These forms could be tailored to meet the Concession requirement, or the customer can create entirely new business items, forms and workflows using the Solution Studio tool. Typical development time for a new business item and form is less than 8 hours.
Workflows – able to route a Change Notice to selected users for their review and rejection or approval. Further notifications, flags and/or emails would be triggered based on whether users approve or Change Notice. Preset workflows should be available for standard types of change, and users should also have the capability of customising a workflow to suit the specific change they have initiated. Workflows in conjunction with Change Notices and other forms could also be used for Document Changes, authorising a users access to software, authorising Purchase Orders etc
Aras Innovator includes a full-unction, robust Workflow engine capable of serial, parallel, branching and looping paths. The voting rules include equal-votes, weighted-votes and veto votes. Workflow assignments can be pre-determined by the Administrator, or dynamically assigned by the workflow engine on the fly, based on common business rules or table lookups. Aras Innovator Workflows can be used for engineering change, and for any new business items that the customer creates. The interface for creating and managing workflow maps and processes is a graphical drag-n-drop interface. The standard Aras Innovator certified Product Engineering solution includes workflows that follow the CMII standard, and these can be easily tailored to match local practices.
Stakeholder Communication – staff members who may have a stake in the change but are not necessarily required to approve the change need the system to notify them of any change. The initiator of the change should have the ability to state who the stakeholders are.
The Innovator Workflow engine has both Notification and Vote functions. The administrator can specify when email notifications are used, when votes (signatures) are required, and when a mix of both are appropriate. Both the workflow activity assignments and the email notifications can be pre-set, or assigned dynamically while the workflow is running.
To Do list – all users should have a To Do list outlining all their outstanding tasks such as approval of Change Requests.
Aras Innovator Inbasket is the central to-do list interface. The InBasket is an integral component of the standard user interface, but is supplemented by emails that are sent to the end-users normal email accounts as reminders. The Inbasket is also available as a web service so that the Innovator to-do list can be published on an Intranet web portal or embedded in other applications such as Sharepoint, CAD or Microsoft Office applications. The Aras Innovator InBasket includes all activity assignments made within Innovator, including Workflow, Project assignments, Quality Action Items and Meeting Action Items.
Traceability – the system should have appropriate fields and access to record items such as the first Serial Number of a product built after implementation of a change. This will allow traceability of change down to an individual product level. The Serial Number would be provided by the Contract Manufacturer
Serial traceability (serialized BOM’s with lot-codes of supplier parts, manufacturing data etc) has been implemented by customers, and this solution is available as a community shared solution. If full serial traceability is not required, the serial number cut-in data could be easily added to the CN form as a required field to record the actual start of the change implementation.
Action Tracking – task items should be generated for each of the tasks identified in the Change Notice, and progress tracking of the completion of those changes would allow the business to see if the change has been fully implemented.
Action item tracking is supported by the Aras Innovator standard solutions and workflow engine. Depending on the complexity and duration of the implementation plan for the CN, either a Workflow process or a Project plan is used to assign and control the activities. Aras Innovator includes 3 “process” engines, Lifeycycle, Workflow and Project, which can be used independently or working in conjunction to solve specific business process automation scenarios. An implementation recommendation will be made by Aras, after the requirements and internal processes are better understood. All three “process” engines are included, no charge, with the standard product download from www.aras.com
Email notification – the system should inform staff via email when they have a task outstanding such as approval of a Change Notice, or completion of any of the tasks recorded in Action Tracking. The system should also send reminder emails after a set period of time
The Workflow and Project engines both support Email notifications, reminders, and escalation upon a timeout condition.
Search functionality – users should be able to retrieve a complete and comprehensive list of all changes that relate to a product, a product family, or specific items, documents or data that are related to a product. This would enable the user to see a complete history of changes and enable them to drill into the detail of the change including why the change was made, when, and what actions were carried out to effectively implement the change.
Standard functionality includes a Tab on any item under change control, which displays the result of such a search automatically.
Is there a way to turn on a comment/note field every time you make a change to an ItemType, Item, or any other object and save that object? They were interested in keeping a more detailed record for the changes that occur and why the changes were being made, so that there is a record of the change/modification decision for future audits.
Aras Innovator has a built-in History function that achieves most of what you are asking. History is enabled per ItemType in the ItemType Tool, by checking the History button. A table will be created that records the User, TimeStamp and Action of every transaction. If you also want a detailed, field level, record of every change, you should also make the ItemType Versionable. All edits will now create a new Generation in the database, which can be viewed by selecting View Versions for the item. Additionally there is a built in function on Lifecycle Promotions that will prompt the end-user to provide a comment that is stored into the History the table. Innovator currently does not have an out-of-the-box way to prompt for comments on each Save or Update, but that is a reasonable customization. I would add a flag on the ItemType, that is enabled when History is enabled, that also stops and prompts the user for a comment before every save action, storing the comment into the History table.
The system shall be capable of storing the effectivity information (i.e. implementation records, dates and/or serial numbers) of any change to the product design and/or process required to manufacture the product.
Meets requirement. Aras out-of-the-box functionality meets the CMPIC and CMII certification standards. The CMII standard supports date based effectivity. If the company needs plan change cut-in based on serial number, this can be done as a customization (Aras has experience with serial number based change planning).
If the company will use data based effectivities for change planning, but then record the serial number change incorporation, this is a simple tailoring (8 hours or less).
The system shall allow bulk configuration changes to accommodate company organizational structure.
Meets requirement.
What is the process for configuring the system?
Aras Innovator is the only Model-Based PLM architecture on the market. Modeling is a truly unique process of graphically describing forms, workflows, business rules, etc. using the built-in drag-n-drop design studio. Modeling ensures the highest level of flexibility to a company without costly programming, and ensures that the changes will be compatible with future upgrades.