Happy New Year! I hope that you have had a smooth transition back into the daily grind. I have been spending some time lining up topics for the first quarter of this year. It feels a bit odd to plan a blog since it should be organic and off the cuff. But the reality is that like you, I also wear multiple hats and my main focus is on developing our product. By having a rough plan allows me to provide consistent content efficiently while keeping my Product Management work moving forward.
I posted a few times last year about customizing PLM systems and specifically how simple it is to customize Aras Innovator. I thought I would walk you through a quick bit of customization so you can get a feel for the process.
One of the great things about Aras Innovator is that our Model Based Service Oriented Architecture makes customizing easy. Our architecture allows you to concentrate on creating the data and connections you need in a simple and logical manner (aka modeling). We handle the rest behind the scenes. However, we get a lot of feedback that it is too good to be true or that we are somehow faking things. I can understand skepticism. But we are not pulling a Jedi mind trick on you. Isn't one of the most basic things that you were taught in Engineering school to Keep It Simple Stupid? Worked then, works now...
I'm planning to pull the covers back on our MB SOA over the coming weeks. Let us start by considering a new custom item. Since I'm an admitted SciFi geek Ill carry on with the Star Wars theme from a few weeks ago. We will make a form for logging Jedi. This goes to show that your customizations can be anything, not just parts and documents. What other things in your environment need to be managed? Requirements, Test Plans, Test Equipment, Machines, Material Specifications, Training records...
Prerequisite knowledge for this activity is MS SQL, C#, Javascript, and REST. Gotcha! Just kidding. I'll go out on a limb and say that nearly any Engineer or IT type that is comfortable with the basic ideas of PDM and CAD will have no problems. I'm assuming you are learning in a training or development area, so who cares if you make a mistake! You can create another clean one if needed.
Note: I'm going to include more pictures than words to try to be brief. If you are missing something - send me a note.
| Step1 - Create ItemType I start off by creating a new ItemType and filling in the basic properties that define it.
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Step 2 - Create properties & set permissions
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| Step 3 - Set Form You need a form to fill in information. Forms are part of the views tab and one is automatically created for you. But it is empty. Here is a quick & dirty way to populate your form without jumping into the form editor. That's it...you have a real live item ready for data.
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Step 4 - Make some Jedi! Open your Jedi ItemType and create new jedi items. Note that until you have some jedi items to choose from you cannot add the master or apprentices.
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| Step 5 - Rank your Jedi Yoda deserves respect for being a Jedi Master. Lets create a Lifecycle to apply the various states of Jedi Mastery. Go back into your ItemType and create a Lifecycle.
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Step 6 - Design the Jedi Mastery Lifecycle Now open the lifecycle you created (rt click), lock it for editing, and design the lifecycle.
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| Step 7 - Apply Rank Now lets give Yoda his respect. The lifecycle you created is automatically associated to the jedi item - this is part of the core of Aras Innovator. Now lets promote him to his official state. You will need to promote multiple times to get to the proper state. What should you do to fast track this process?
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Step 8 - Show off that Rank So we set the rank and Yoda has is appropriate and well earned title of Jedi Master. But we cannot see it. Lets fix that. Start by unhiding the state property so we can see it in our list of jedi. Hidden and hidden 2 control the visibility of fields in item and search grids.
Now add that property to the form also. But you cannot edit that - it is set by the Lifecycle.
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| All done Here is what the form and grid look like when completed. You can now create the entire jedi order. And along the way of you decide you want more properties - you can add them, update the form and they show up. Simple.
And on the back end this is what the SQL database looks like - and you did not have to do anything to make that happen. You didn't even need to know SQL existed - Aras Innovator takes care of all of the behind the scenes work for you.
So all said I think this exercise took around 20 minutes. We created a new item type and an associated lifecycle. We also created items and promoted them along the lifecycle. What would be good follow up examples? Perhaps a sith item type. How about a vehicle item type and a relationship to the jedi or sith - with that we can tie(pun) Darth Vader to his Imperial Star Destroyer and his favorite TIE fighter. Something obviously relatable is creating a workflow with voting that would allow the jedi council to vote on the readiness of young Jedi in training to transition from Padawan to Knight. |
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This was a simple exercise that I am sure you can imagine many uses for at your company. My goal here is to show you how simple it is create a custom data model (items, properties, etc.) and business model (lifecycle, workflow, methods, etc.) that are fit for your needs. You don't need to have a huge staff of SQL admins, programmers and analysts. You can get your team together, whiteboard out how your business REALLY works and model it in Innovator in a few days. How long did you spend doing that with your current system? And how much of it is truly accurate to your process?
You really can have your cake and eat it too. With Aras you can have a cost effective PLM solution that you can customize to fit support your Business of Engineering.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully, I'll get to FINALLY see Star Wars this weekend...
-Dave