After reading the discussion on how to manage supplier and manufacturer information in PLM and/or ERP I took the opportunity to document the datamodel as I see it and the way-of-working around it. Point of attention to start with is that PLM and ERP have a difference approach for definining the supplier and/or manufacturer. In the lifecycle definition it is not strictly necessary to define both; it may be sufficient to define a supplier. Additionally a manufacturer may of course also function as supplier. The resulting datamodel in PLM will look like this.
After reading the discussion on how to manage supplier and manufacturer information in PLM and/or ERP I took the opportunity to document the datamodel as I see it and the way-of-working around it. Point of attention to start with is that PLM and ERP have a difference approach for definining the supplier and/or manufacturer. In the lifecycle definition it is not strictly necessary to define both; it may be sufficient to define a supplier. Additionally a manufacturer may of course also function as supplier. The resulting datamodel in PLM will look like this.
An Item defined in PLM can have one or more relations to a supplier or manufacturer item, each of which is linked to the actuel supplier or manufacturer. If both are defined a implicit relations is created between the manufacturer and the supplier. Take note that may change data if needed; if a supplier is specified, purchasing may decide to define a manufacturer whether or not it is defined or not. If a certain item is to be specifically ordered from a specific manufacturer this must be defined in the item definition and purchasing may not deviate. In this case the actual supplier may be chosen freely.
As mentioned the definitions for PLM in some case proposals and only focused on supplying the minimum of information to the ERP system. The datamodel in ERP contains a slightly different datamodel, focussed on the manufacturer.
The Item has an approved manufacturer list referencing at least one manufacturer item. This manufacturer item is ofcourse linked to the manufacturer definition and an approved supplier list. This list references at least one Supplier. Note that, additional to the PLM model status codes appear to indicate the logistical status of a part, e.g. Approved, QualityHold, Unqualified, Disqualified, etc.
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