Overview of Product Development Business Objects

You can manage the design and development of products by using the following building blocks:

• Items

• Documents

• Manufacturer parts and their manufacturers

• Structures and

• Change orders and change requests

Items and Documents

You can create items in Product Development or Product Information Management work areas to represent the parts and assemblies of a product. A document is another type of item or part, representing description or specification of items. The specific attributes of each new business object describe the characteristics of the item or document and, taken together, the particular product. In this way, item and document business objects carry the necessary technical and engineering information of the product.

Manufacturer Parts and Manufacturers

A manufacturer part is an item produced by a manufacturer. A manufacturer part can be related to any item designed or produced by your company.

You can add the approved manufacturers list (AML) on an item’s AML tab. You can also add AML on the Structure tab of the item. A document may not be associated with a manufacturer part. An item which is associated with a manufacturer part and belongs to a structure will have an icon next to it on the Structure table that indicates the association with a manufacturer part.

Manufacturer parts are identified with manufacturer part numbers. Oracle Product Development requires a manufacturer to be created before you may even create a manufacturer part produced by that manufacturer.

Note: Item grade is calculated for items only, not for documents nor for manufacturer parts. However, the configuration of item grade may allow the AML situation to be considered in the calculation of the item grade.

Change Orders and Change Requests

Change orders and change requests enable you to manage the modifications to an item in your company's design and manufacturing processes.

When a change order is used to formalize the enrichment of an item (adding and modifying item attributes) or the construction of a structure, no further modification on any scale can be effected without an additional change order. Change orders, like items, can be initiated in the Product Development or Product Information Management work areas.