Numbering
Part numbers are yours. The one decision worth making deliberately at the start is whether they carry meaning. Significant numbers encode the classification into the number; non-significant numbers are just identifiers, with meaning held in fields.
| Significant | Non-significant | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | RES-0603-10K-1% | 100248 |
| Readable by a person | Yes | No |
| Survives a re-classification | No | Yes |
| Encourages duplicates | Yes — a typo makes a new part | Less so |
| Common in | Small teams, catalogue parts | Larger part masters |
Neither is wrong. What is wrong is starting with one and drifting into the other, which is how a part master ends up with three numbering schemes and nobody able to say which parts are the same thing.
Parts
4,182 parts · 27 flagged as possible duplicates
| Part | Description | Class | Used in | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100248 | Resistor 10k 1% 0603 | Passive / Resistor | 38 BOMs | Released |
| 100249 | Resistor 10K 1% 0603 | Passive / Resistor | 2 BOMs | Duplicate? |
| 204118 | Housing, upper, ABS | Mechanical / Enclosure | 4 BOMs | Released |
| 311902 | Cable assembly 300mm | Assembly / Cable | 11 BOMs | Released |
| 420071 | Label, rating plate | Documentation | 0 BOMs | Draft |
Where-used
Where-used answers "if I change this part, what breaks" — every bill of material a part appears in, at every level. It is the single most valuable screen in the module and the reason a part master is worth keeping properly: a part that appears in thirty-eight products is a different risk from one that appears in two, and you cannot know which without this.
Duplicates
Every part master accumulates duplicates. Somebody creates a new part because they could not find the existing one, and now the same physical component has two numbers, two suppliers and two sets of stock. The module flags likely duplicates on description and attributes; merging is manual, because an automatic merge of two parts that were not the same is far more expensive than the duplicate.
- Review the duplicate list monthly rather than at the point somebody notices in production.
- The reason duplicates appear is almost always that search did not find the existing part — which is a description and classification problem, not a discipline problem.
- Merging keeps the surviving number and rewrites the BOM references.
What this does not do
Parts have states, not revisions with change orders behind them. That is the missing change control.
PLM does not know quantities on hand.
Parts do not carry cost, so a BOM does not total one.
Document management is not built.
Questions
Can we change a part number?
Yes, but every reference follows it. Prefer merging over renumbering.
Can two people edit a part at once?
The last save wins. There is no locking.
How deep can classification go?
Several levels. Keep it shallower than you think you need.