2 RFI Process and Agile Classes

As an information provider ("supplier") to a manufacturer ("buyer") who is seeking compliance information via Agile PG&C, this manual is your user handbook.

Your company may or may not actually manufacture specific parts that go into the products of an OEM; in any case, your company does provide compliance information about parts to this manufacturer.

2.1 Requests For Information

At the supplier site, information providers use PG&C to complete and sign off on Declarations - the vehicle of Requests For Information (RFIs):

Declare compliance with specifications concerning hazardous materials;
Disclose which hazardous substances are contained in the components and subassemblies it provides or is authorized to provide data or other disclosure information.

A declaration keeps track of the compliance information about substances and materials contained in parts or part groups that are named in the declaration. The Default Declaration Workflow conveys RFIs from your buyers. Agile PLM also makes it possible to send customized Declaration workflows to suppliers.

2.1.1 RFI Sequence

The general sequence of the RFI process follows. The supplier is involved in step 5 only; the other steps take place at the buyer company.

Identify parts and part groups for which compliance data is required.
Identify people within buyer company and suppliers (for manufacturer parts) who can provide compliance data.
Create declarations for parts, manufacturer parts, and part groups.
Route a declaration to an information supplier.
Supplier completes the declaration with data and a signoff.
Compliance data is assessed for completeness and validated for correctness.
Reviewed and approved declarations are released, which "publishes" the data across the product record in PLM.

The RFI process is depicted below.

2.2 PG&C Business Objects

The PG&C solution offers configurable business objects called Substances, Specifications, Declarations, and Part Groups. Items and Manufacturer Parts (from Agile Product Collaboration) are also integral to the solution.

Note:

It is possible that your buyer's Agile administrator has renamed existing classes and created new subclasses than those presented in this guide.

Here are brief definitions of the PG&C business objects.

2.2.1 Substances

Substances are basic building blocks in PG&C. A substance is any chemical element or compound that is tracked within Agile PLM. There are four kinds of substances, which cover a variety of circumstances: Substances, Substance Groups, Materials, and Subparts.

Subparts class - a subpart is a subunit of a component. Subparts are not numbered and do not expand the BOM.
Materials class - a material is a compound chemical, that is, a substance consisting of multiple substances. A good example of a material is a glue or a resin that can be bought in bulk.
Substance Groups class - a group of multiple substances. A substance group must have a Base Substance, which is the substance that the legislation is interested in. A substance group called "Lead and Lead Compounds" would cite Lead as its base substance, and it could comprise chemicals like Lead-oxide, Lead-nitrate, and Lead-sulfate.
Substances class - a substance is a single chemical element; for example, lead, chromium, or cadmium. Generally, these are the potentially hazardous substances that legislations are interested in, as described in specifications. The new Alias attribute facilitates possible inconsistencies in how substances are named by the supplier.

2.2.1.1 Substance Aliasing

The Alias attribute is provided to inform the PG&C system of "substitute names" of substances and substance groups. For example, an alias for Lead could be the chemical notation "Pb". The buyer's system can then resolve confusion if you, the supplier, submit information for a substance that you call Pb but they call Lead.

If the name of a substance/substance group that you provide (in the declaration) does not exist in the buyer's system (and it is not already an alias for another substance), the buyer can add it as an alias for the intended substance/SG.

This makes it easier for you to use names of substances and substance groups in your declaration responses according to your conventions without concern that a name may be different in the buyer's system.

2.2.2 Specifications

Specifications track the different legislations, customer specifications, or internal specifications with which an assembly or part must comply. The Specifications object is used to create representations of specification documents, regulations, published compliance criteria.

An example of a regulation issued by a government body is the European RoHS directive. Environmental specifications are substance-based, and contain a list of banned substances or substances of concern and their threshold values.

In Agile, specifications are used to validate declarations and assess the compliance of parts by evaluating whether a given restricted substance in the composition of a part surpasses its specified threshold value.

2.2.3 Parts and Part Groups

Items and Manufacturer Parts can be referred to generally as "parts." The phrase "parts and part groups" (or the notation <Part/PG>) comprises "any kind of part used in the buyer company's manufacturing process."

2.2.3.1 Items and Manufacturer Parts

Items (Parts and Documents) and Manufacturer Parts - we refer to these collectively as "parts" - are two base classes in Agile PLM that are used to create objects that represent the things that your company and its suppliers assemble into the products your company sells. They are therefore the entities for which compliance data must be sought.

2.2.3.2 Part Groups

A part group (PG) is a "container" that tracks the overall chemical composition for all parts of a particular type. If multiple parts share the same properties - for example, the same composition - you can define a part group with those characteristics. The parts (items and manufacturer parts) belonging to a part group have a conversion factor that is used to convert data such as Mass and Substances Content from the part group to its member parts.

To describe how the conversion factor works, let a part group describe a series of cable, made of the same materials and available from supplier(s) in a variety of lengths. The part group (the Agile object) contains the data that defines the "unit" length of cable to be 2 feet long. The part group object then lists cables of 2 ft, 6 ft, and 10 ft in length. So, the 2-ft cable has a conversion factor of 1 in terms of its mass and hazardous substances content, the 6-ft cable has a conversion factor of 3, while the 10-ft cable has a conversion factor of 5.

2.2.3.3 Declarations

A declaration is the main object of record in the PG&C solution: it stores questions posed by a compliance manager to an information supplier about the supplier itself, its products, or how its products comply with given specifications. Upon completion, it contains the supplier's data and responses to the questions. Also, declarations keep track of all the substances and materials that are contained in parts or part groups.

PG&C offers an attribute called User-entered CAS Number, which can be entered by the information supplier on a declaration or by a regular user on a part or part group. These are used by the compliance manager to ascertain precisely what substance is being referred to by the supplier.

In Agile PLM, the Declarations base class has seven default classes of declarations, each with a single child subclass. The following table defines the kinds of declarations in PG&C.

Declaration class	Definition
Substance Declarations	The supplier is requested to provide compliance information for each substance within the specification.
Homogeneous Material Declarations	The supplier is requested to provide a complete BOS breakdown of the part and provide compliance information at the homogeneous material level.
Part Declarations	Receive part-level compliance information as well as other composition header level information (manufacturing parameters).
JGPSSI Declarations	The supplier is requested to provide compliance information (weights) according to the JGP standard. Note: There is a fully supported Japanese version of the JGPSSI template for creating JGPSSI Declarations; see your administrator.
Supplier Declarations of Conformance	A questionnaire to assess supplier compliance with specifications from customers and government agencies. The survey addresses compliance at a general company level. Can be used for CSR-type declarations.
IPC 1752-1 Declarations	A Joint Industry Guide (JIG) substance declaration for electronic products. Note In addition to the IPC 1752-1 subclass, the IPC 1752A subclass is available. It represents the latest version of the standard.
IPC 1752-2 Declarations	A Joint Industry Guide (JIG) homogeneous-material declaration for electronic products. Note In addition to the IPC 1752-2 subclass, the IPC 1752A subclass is available. It represents the latest version of the standard.

Declarations are the routable objects in PG&C, similar to change orders in Product Collaboration. As a routable object, each declaration advances through a workflow that implements the Request for Information (RFI) business process. When a declaration is released by the compliance manager, the information gathered from it is published to the product record, thereby updating the composition data contained within the parts and part groups listed by the declaration.