Examining the PeopleSoft Engineering Product Strategy

Traditional MRPII systems focused on a company's manufacturing operations through the production planning, scheduling, tracking, materials management, and accounting functions. Engineering input to that system consisted of bills of material that were often manually re-keyed into the MRP system. What happened in the product design, development, prototyping, and approval stages was invisible to the MRP system and most of its users. These engineering functions were supported by a number of computer systems including CAD systems, project management systems, project costing, and Product Data Management (PDM). When the BOM was finally approved, it was thrown over the wall to manufacturing to be re-keyed into the MRPII system.

In traditional systems, many manufacturing system users, who should be participants in the engineering process, aren't able to participate because of the lack of integration between the manufacturing system and the supporting engineering systems. This list demonstrates how different enterprise participants outside the engineering department need to be involved in the process:

• Suppliers need to:

  • Provide component quotes.

  • Participate in the design process.

• Purchasing needs to:

  • Provide and track quotes.

  • Look at the short- and long-term availability of components.

  • Look at short- and long-term contracts and pricing.

• Accounting must evaluate costs, to determine the potential return on investment (ROI) for products.

• Manufacturing needs to determine whether the designs can be manufactured.

• Planners need visibility to future new product requirements so that they can properly plan for new materials and capacity.

• Sales and marketing must review products, for customer feedback.

The engineering system is also involved with product changes that can impact all of the groups mentioned. The ability to effectively coordinate the tasks of all of the participants in the design and approval process and give them timely access to the right information can help businesses to:

• Improve quality.

• Reduce costs.

• Shorten the time to market.

This is where PeopleSoft Engineering and its workflow-enabled system comes in.

In response to these customer requirements, PeopleSoft Engineering provides both specific functionality and openness to other systems. It provides an engineering workbench environment consisting of:

• Engineering bills of material (EBOMs)

• Engineering routings (ERTGs)

• ECRs

• ECOs

• EBOM cost roll-up capability

• Online BOM comparisons

• Seamless integration to a leading document management vault

This functionality, combined with the workflow-enabled PeopleSoft architecture, enables you to manage the routing, approval, and notification of ECRs, ECOs, new BOMs or routings, and existing BOM or routing changes.

We provide all of this because we know that while constant change is a fact of life in today's competitive environment, how you manage that change determines your success. From a product perspective, companies are constantly looking for product improvements to differentiate themselves from their competitors. For that reason, change is good. However, product changes and new product introductions can impact nearly every part of your organization as well as your customers and suppliers. PeopleSoft Engineering is a dynamic product designed to help you manage product introduction and change processes throughout your enterprise by enabling you to manage all types of product data and structures.

You can tailor the PeopleSoft Engineering implementation and complexity to meet your business needs; you can use it to simply maintain new and pending product structures or to manage the engineering change order approval process throughout your organization.

PeopleSoft Engineering delivers:

• An independent engineering workbench that isolates changes from production data.

• ECR, ECO functionality, and complete change process support.

• Optionally communicate and share BOM, ECR, and ECO information with suppliers if PeopleSoft Engineering is installed.

• Mass BOM maintenance by ECO or by mass maintenance code.

• Innovative PeopleSoft Navigator and workflow capability.

• Seamless enterprise document management integration.

• Integration with PeopleSoft Cost Management and PeopleSoft Manufacturing (ERP integration).

• The ability to import BOMs from external sources.

• Diverse inquiries.

• Reports.